When Memories Morph

I’m gobsmacked. I pulled up this picture of my kid sister in that ancient stroller/ walker. I planned to stick it in an email to a cousin to illustrate a story snippet about our  grandfather and my dad the day they poured a big square concrete pad in that back corner. I was three at the time, and I remember that while he smoothed concrete, Granddaddy smelled like whiskey and cigarettes, the point of my story to Cuz. That pad served two doors, the one you see, and one you don’t. The second should be around the corner to the left. That second door opened into the dining area. Or so I’ve always thought. Until today.

I strained toward my screen in bewilderment. Where is that door!?  I KNOW it was there! Holy cow! How can this be? I mentally scramble inside that small dining room on a day before my mother and grandmother knocked a wall down while the men were out hunting. Before the wall came down, Mother had her sewing machine in that room along the soon-to-vanish wall. Until this very minute, I would’ve sworn to you that the door was behind her left shoulder as I sat facing her on the floor to her right, making tangles in thread while trying to sew.

Okay. I get it. The door was never there. I edit it out of memory and the picture still looks right. My earliest memories are in that Albuquerque house where we lived until I was six. This is not the first mind-shattering discovery about memories of that yard. Previous pictures have shown my sandbox was not where I remembered it being, and a willow tree did not have two of its four trunks amputated. What gives?

I have no idea why I remembered these things wrong, but neuroscience is no help here. This just happened. No need to explain. These morphed memories are not just a factor of my young age when they formed. Like most everyone, I’ve learned through the years that my memory often differs from what others remember, and I’ve seen evidence to back those others up more than once. The question is how that affects my story. I ask myself these two questions:

Does it matter? In the case of this house, yes. It matters to me to stick with the evidence and note that my memory was different. Since I have no emotional attachment to the earlier memory, it’s an easy switch. If no evidence is at hand when my sister and I remember a room color differently, I might flip a coin or stick with my version. If details change the truth of the story, they matter.

When it does matter . . . If I discovered I was wrong about something I was emotionally invested in, something that did change the truth of a story, things would become more complex. Using a hypothetical example, let’s say that while Nora was settling her father’s estate, she was stunned to discover documents proving that her mother was his second wife. He’d been married for several years and divorced before he met Nora’s mother, and furthermore, Nora has half-siblings she never knew about.

That extreme example would set off a hurricane of memories and emotions ─ and maybe research ─ leaving a new story in its wake. In stories about her father, Nora may choose to honor her original memories of her dad as a staunch church member and strong advocate of family values, then reflect back on them in the light of what she’s learned and what it all means to her. Perhaps her story would focus on how things changed. But if she wrote stories exclusively within the period before learning this fact, she may choose to write from the perspective of what she believed to be true at the time.

So whether you remember wrong or learn something new, memories morph. When you discover discrepancies, it’s your choice whether to make that discovery part of your story or the focus of your story, or to honor the truth of the memory that shaped your life and made you who you are. It’s your story. Write from your heart and be true to your Story.

Preserve a Record of Life As It Was

Believe it or not, this post is not about politics. It’s about change. Regardless of your political position or beliefs, you’d have to be living in a deep jungle to be  unaware how fast things are changing. It’s too soon to say if life will be better for Americans in general or if some form of Armageddon is at hand as current headlines seem to suggest. Heavens above, collecting those headlines today for the collage you see above was an anxiety-laden task!

For better or worse, I’m betting on the end of life as we’ve known it. It’s already drastically changed from what I knew as a child.

In any case, it’s time to preserve memories of the past. WRITE ABOUT LIFE AS YOU HAVE KNOWN IT. You can’t count on history books to tell it like it was for you. History is always written through filters, and those filters change over time, subject to prevailing culture. If lifestyles in the future are an improvement, let your progeny know how much better it is.

On the other hand, if, as some fear, tyranny is at hand, preserve a picture of freedom. Keep its memory alive.

I am convinced that it’s important for families to create personal archives, and to keep print copies as well as backups in pdf format on DVD disks or thumb drives. What if the internet came tumbling down? What if libraries full of books were burned? What if …?

No, I do not anticipate a Doomsday scenario, but … what if?

In addition to preserving your memories of the past and what life was like, share your reflections about it. I’m not writing about politics and my personal beliefs here, but I am writing piles of journal entries and essays that aren’t public, but will be available for family. I want my grandchildren to know what I believe, what I feel, what actions I’m taking.

Writing prompts for preserving a picture of life in the past

• How much freedom did you have as a child? Did you freely roam the neighborhood? Ride your bike across town when you were 10 or 12? Play hide-and-seek with the neighborhood gang after dark in the summer?
• What did you do to pass the time before computers and electronic games? Did your family play cards or other games together? Do crafts?
• What was it like to cook real food from scratch without frozen entrees?
• Did you go to church? What were/are your beliefs?
• What political party did your parents support (if any)?
• Were you ever involved in any protests or demonstrations? Which ones? How and what did you do?
• Did you or your dad ever change the oil in the family car or fix a flat tire on t he road, or do other maintenance?
• What was medical care like? Were you ever in the hospital? How much did it cost when your children were born?
• How have your views changed over the years?
• What are your views on the corner our country seems to be turning right now? What was your position on the 2016 election? Keep a log of your thoughts as things unfold.

This mini-list should get your wheels turning.

Don’t put this off another minutes. Write fast. Write off the top of your head. You may edit it later, but get it on paper, write now!

Dreams Do Come True

Dreams do come true – the day dream kind, the wish upon a star kind. I know this because many of mine have. I know they have because I wrote them down. Two examples stand out and show how writing dreams down can benefit life writers.

Moving to Pittsburgh
Around 1983 I began dreaming about moving away from what I considered to be the serious career limits of life in Washington’s Tri-Cities (Richland, Kennewick and Pasco). That was during the hey day of the goal setting movement, at least for me. So I drafted a list of everything I wanted when we moved, even though no move was in sight. That list had over twenty items. Among other things it included

• Major university.
• Major corporate headquarters
• A house with high ceilings
• A stream in our backyard. (That was pure whimsy, nothing I expected to get.)

I stuck that list somewhere and forgot about it. 

In 1985 my husband accepted a job transfer from the Westinghouse Hanford Nuclear Project to the Westinghouse Nuclear Center in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I was thrilled to be in a suburb of a real city. Fast forward about three years. I found that list. I was stunned. Every item on it had been fulfilled. True, the high ceiling is only a half-cathedral in the living room and the stream only runs after a serious rainstorm, but it is a stream, and it is in the woods in our backyard. Pittsburgh has two renowned universities and several lesser ones and nearly a dozen major corporate headquarters as well a hundreds of smaller ones.

Moving again
in 1993 I wrote a future vision as part of another goal-setting/dream-building exercise. Over the past several years I’ve remembered that exercise often, and looked all over for it, primarily to show my daughter that a dozen years before she met their father, I knew she’d eventually have two daughters. My memory was of writing it by hand in one of the pile of notebooks I began as journals of one sort or another and then abandoned. I’ve found it perplexing that I’ve never been able to find it.

Yesterday I found it. While sorting through various artifacts in my office, thinning things out before packing to move (date as yet undetermined), I found some gorgeous 20-year-old overhead slides I used in workshops and programs on holding effective meetings. Hoping I could find the original file on my computer, I began digging through back-up folders uploaded from old floppies (remember those?). I never did find the slides, but I found something even better:

I found my dream building file, the one I’ve been looking for. Memory was wrong It was never on paper. It’s beautifully done in workbook format. I remember now that I had visions of publishing that workbook, without my personal content.

Reading over the elements of that dream, I buzzed with excitement. I’m living most of that dream right now. Other elements, like the office and house I describe, exactly match what I recently wrote about the house I hope to find in Austin. The dream document said Seattle, but at this point Austin is a better choice. My daughter has built the free-lance writing business I foresaw, and she does have two young daughters. Nearly 25 years after writing that, we will live near each other.

 So what?
Quite aside from any mystical, metaphysical “laws of attraction” aspects of goal-setting, these documents are jewels for lifewriters.

• They document with laser precision just what we hoped and dreamed for at various points in time.
• They provide a mirror for reflecting on subsequent events. If we were on target as I have been, we can follow the trail of events that led from then to now. If not, we can explore the insurmountable obstacles, how they affect us, and how they shaped our lives.
• They provide a focus for stories and memoir.

Sowing and reaping
It’s never too late to start harnessing the power and fascination of dreams. I can’t guarantee they’ll all come true, but I do guarantee you’ll have a fascinating experience as you consider the possibilities. Although it does work to lose them and find them years later, I suggest you start a journal for this specific purpose and keep track of it. That  might be on paper, but a computer file serves well too. Just back it up and file it where you’ll be able to find it again.

Write now: write down a dream of life as you’d like it to be at some point in the future. Give your inner critic a sleeping pill and call in your muse to help you be creative. Be precise and specific about describing details that make it real. Include whimsical elements like that stream. Include emotions and feelings you expect to have. Don’t worry about editing or spelling. Just write it all down. It’s worked for me to file this stuff away and forget about it. Most gurus have you post it on your wall and keep it in sight to keep its power alive. Follow your instincts on this. Years from now, you’ll find it again and have something to remember, write about, and maybe share with your family and the world.

Image credit: Ruben Alexander

Mystery Solved

I couldn’t put words to the vision, perhaps because the vision itself wasn’t clear. Looking across the Godfrey’s living room while  babysitting, I vaguely sensed a phantom group of sophisticated people gathered in a dimly lit, smoke-filled living room much like this one. People lounged on sofa and chairs, some sitting on the floor. They sipped martinis or gin and tonic, discussed philosophy, and ascended to levels of vision inaccessible to mere mortals. These beings were in touch with another realm, larger than life. In touch with the gods? This vision stirred a nameless yearning for something mysterious and transcendent.

Though I seldom thought of it until several years ago when I began writing about those years, that vision has stuck with me for many decades, remaining clear and compelling, an enduring enigma. Over a few years, I’ve written about it from at least a dozen different slants, chipping away, bit by bit, seeking to discern what I was yearning for. Words like transcendence, intellectual and vision came to mind. Those people seemed privy to wisdom and cosmic truths that I yearned to learn.

I came to see this quest for understanding as my metaphor of what may well be mankind’s eternal quest, the force driving most religions. But the mystery remained locked. I continued to hold it gently in the back of my mind.

Last week I found a fascinating thought in Paul Watzlawick’s classic, How Real Is Real? Mankind craves universal unity. I felt a buzz of recognition when I read that thought, and I reread it several times over the next few days, seeking to fully understand its appeal. This seemed deeper than casual allusions to world peace or fear-mongering talk about sinister cabals.

Finally the dots connected: I was imagining phantom people who were at one with Source.

As I realized this, several related pieces fell into place. They saw order. Of course! I’ve mentioned before that Story is the operating system of the human brain. We crave unity. We also crave order, logic, understanding. We want to make sense of life.

But wait. I discovered another channel in this scene, one I’d been unaware of. At least to my young mind, these people had broken through the shackles of convention and societal expectations. They were free. They were bold. They were unafraid. They were happy with who they were, and for at least that moment, that was enough.

Bottom line, they were immersed in universal LOVE. (I remind myself and readers that I had no basis in fact or experience for this totally fictitious fantasy.)

Well, what do you know – universal love is something I know a bit about, and it doesn’t take a cocktail party to find. After all the books, the rituals, the prayers, the seeking, it’s just … there. My mystery is solved, and through the magic of story and the magic of words – my words, Watzlawick’s words, and many others – the yearning has come full circle. How delightfully ironic that once I saw, I already knew.

Perhaps my life would be equally rich if I’d never unlocked this nagging mystery, but the fact that it stayed freshly in mind for well over fifty years, begging to be solved, says something. I’m convinced I would never have unraveled it if I had not discovered various forms of life writing. I’ve journaled about it, scribbled random thoughts,  written essays and stories. My writing process chipped away at the shell, thinning it to the point that Watzlawick’s words could rupture that final protective membrane.

What will I do with this insight now? Maybe nothing. Or maybe I’ll include it in another memoir or work it into a novel. For now it’s on my scrap pile awaiting further disposition. Or not. Perhaps solving it is enough.

Write now: write in whatever form you choose about a compelling vision, memory or thought that’s puzzled you for years. Keep writing about it off and on until its message becomes clear.

Make New Friends: Writing Layers of Meaning

Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver and the other gold.

This classic friendship song began endlessly looping on brain radio the other day. Inspired by Kathy Pooler’s blog post, A Tribute to My Girlfriends, I sat down to pen a post about friendship. What emerged is far from what I set out to write.

I began writing about the fact unlike Kathy, who has remained close with numerous friends for decades, my friends are more situational, coming and going as our respective interests change, and … that paragraph was never finished. Something about the thought didn’t quite ring true, and a recent memory displaced it. A memory of a brief encounter I recently had with four friends I’ve been out of contact with for over fifteen years. How do those friendships fit in the silver and gold category, I wondered.

They don’t! As I wrote, I realized those categories don’t work for me. I realized how limiting categories and labels are, how they inherently imply boundaries and barriers. Degrees of closeness? No barriers there. But what about gaps? Nobody can stay constantly connected with every friend.

The longer I wrote, the more confused I became. Finally I had a breakthrough. My thoughts compressed into something manageable that I could get my mind around:

Each of my friends, local, online or far away, is unique. Each brings a warm glow of general pleasure, and each fills a different niche in my heart. As time goes by, our mutual interests may wax and wane, perhaps remaining on hold for years or decades. But that bond remains like an unlit burner, waiting for a mere spark to rekindle its warmth.

Maybe Kathy and I aren’t so different after all. And maybe it’s time to rewrite that song: 

Make new friends, but keep the old,
One will warm you while the other’s cold.

Far or near, good friends will bring cheer,
All that’s needed is a phone to hear.

Skype or text, an email now and then,
Friends will be there, though we don’t know when.

Since writing that essay, I’m seeing friends in new ways. Some are soft and fuzzy, while others have organized edges, maybe with a sharp spots to make allowances for. The state of our relationship may vary from red hot to vacationing violet. Friends light up my life, though we may have spells of darkness between us now and then.

My hour of writing that essay was priceless. It exemplifies William Faulkner’s immortal quote: ''I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.”

Write now: Pick a topic like friendship or love, or God, or something else big and grand. Start writing and see where the topic takes you. Polish the essay, or leave it raw. The purpose is self-discovery. Leave a comment or send me an email about your surprising discovery.

Photo credits: top: Arkansas Shutterbug. bottom: Francesco. Both altered and used under Creative Commons license.

Writing on a Hamster Wheel

I’m working on a complicated story right now. It’s total fiction, with no basis in my experience, and I’ve fallen into a trap common to writers of any genre, the hamster wheel syndrome. I know better than to do this, but I’ve been editing the heck out of what I’ve already written rather than forging boldly ahead to write the story. I know where it’s going – I’m just having trouble reading the markers along the path.

Yesterday I had a Skype visit with Ian Mathie, a prolific cross-genre author who pops out stories like a cat birthing a litter. Already this year Mosaique Press has released two new titles by him, making a total of six book-length volumes published over the last three years. This year’s first, Sorcerers and Orange Peels, is his fifth book-length memoir covering grippingly arcane experiences in a remote African village while working as a water engineer. The second, Chinese Take-Out, is a fictitious spy thriller based on valid history. 

As we chatted, I learned that he is nearing completion on two more novels and another memoir. When I mentioned my dilemma, he confirmed what I suspected: “... I just write the story and edit later.”

As much as I value Ian’s advice, this particular bit was old news. Who hasn’t heard some version before? For example,

• Write with your display off to avoid distraction.
• Write by hand.
• Set a time limit for cranking out XXXX number of words.

None of this advice addresses my specific version of the challenge. I do a lot of my writing when not at the keyboard. I think about this story constantly. What would I really do if I were in this situation? Or, How can I get them out of the campground at 4:30 a.m. without waking other campers? Or, Should they eat breakfast or fast? What are the forest service regulations about dogs in the national forest? Does El Sabio need to be on a leash?

This type of question is specific to fiction. If this were memoir, I’d know the answers. But even memoir writers have dilemmas about what to include and how to frame it.

A fresh start

This morning I sat down to write, determined to tackle new content, but wrestling with a few changes needed in earlier material that had become clear. Determined to capture them without spending another morning rewriting, I tried a new trick, writing the edit concepts down, like story ideas. I wanted them in the story near the relevant points. I could have used Comments in Word, but I hate the clunky way Word handles comments.

Instead, I inserted virtual sticky notes. These small text boxes have a pale yellow background, no border and a 2 point shadow on the bottom to make them look real – you know how sticky notes tend to bend upward just a smidge as you apply them. Right-clicking on the box border gave me the option of making this first one the text-box default for this document. To make them feel even more “real,” I created a style to make the text look hand-written. As a final touch, I changed the document layout from even 1.25 side margins to .75 and 1.75, making side margin room for these stickies.

After adding a few notes in the margin and using strike-out to indicate which paragraphs need to be deleted or revised, I forged strongly ahead with the story.

Who knew one little confession to a writing buddy could bear such powerful fruit? That rope he tossed lured me off the hamster wheel. Yes, I knew this stuff before, but sometimes we need a helping hand from a friend to use what we already know.

Write now: Seek advice from writing friends for dealing with your particular form of writer’s block. If the advice doesn’t fit, thank them anyway, and keep looking for a solution. Before you know it, words will be gushing again. Post a comment about your experience with writers block of various sorts, or send me an email. We need to pull together to beat this writing dis-ease.

Flash Memoir–A Versatile Tool

Many memories are tiny, so tiny they fit in a short paragraph. So tiny you may not think them stories at all. But don’t brush them away. They have stayed with you for a reason, and a much larger chunk of memory is usually attached to that alluring tag, one with deep richness that can develop into a lengthy tale, perhaps even a full-length memoir. Those fragments are worth exploring.

Journaling and writing practice are traditional ways of digging more deeply into the roots of memory. Flash memoir is yet another. In flash memoir, variously defined as stories under 500, 800 or 1000 words, you are challenged to develop a story concisely, framing it with crisp precision.

Writing flash memoir has more benefits, but first, an example. The following  474 word story grew from a micro-memory of mine:

---

First Kiss

He wraps his arms around me. I raise my head and his lips brush lightly against mine.
          Does this count as a kiss? My thought lasts longer than the kiss does. I smile bravely up at my tall date, hoping stars dance in my eyes. After all, I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment, my first kiss from a boyfriend.     
          Is he a boyfriend? I’m not sure.
          His smile seems unsure. His arms fall as he steps back.
          “Uhm, well, goodnight…” He turns and walks down the steps and back to his truck that smells of hay and manure and damp cowboy boots. I open the door and go in.
          I feel empty, disappointed. This is not what I’ve dreamed of. I don’t feel any tingles with him. He’s tall, has a nice smile, but this six-foot-four, baby-faced cowboy seems bland as butter. Does he feel more passion for me than I do for him? We don’t hang around or have classes together. We only know each other from square-dancing. I think he needed a date tonight. So did I.
   
A month passes and we go square-dancing again. He picks me up early and takes me to his house and introduces me to his parents. His mother slouches on the couch with a book and cigarette. No makeup adorns her craggy face. Does she ever comb her stringy hair? It looks like she cuts it herself in the dark. This hag is married to a division head?
          Said division head sits in another corner of the room with the newspaper. He glances up and nods. Both smile when they hear that I just won second prize in the state Make-It-Yourself-With-Wool contest.
          “That’s nice,” says his mother, her beady eyes peering through wire-frame coke bottle glasses.
          We leave. Mission accomplished, I guess. What was this all about? Is he trying to make points with his parents? Why?
          During intermission, instead of gabbing with kids in our square, we wander outside. He puts his arm around my shoulders, maybe to keep us both warm in the evening chill. He talks about his horse. This is more like it. Will he kiss me for real? There may still be hope.
          He doesn’t.
          When he takes me home his lips brush mine twice. This time I don’t care.
   
Fifty years pass and we meet at a class reunion. He’s lean, weathered just right, still wearing cowboy boots. His smile lights up the room, twinkles flashing in crinkly eyes. This man evolved from that boy? Wow! He wraps his arms around me, right there in front of his dumpling queen wife, who watches with tiny sad eyes sunk deeply into her face. A lifetime of what-ifs swirls in my heart as our bodies cling together for six sizzling seconds.  
          I do not lift my face.

---

I worked for hours on these few words and discovered additional benefits from this compressed form:

• It forced me to focus like a laser on the story topic and message.
• It forced me to examine every word and prune anything that did not add value.
• Ditto with details.
• It forced me to craft precise, imaginative descriptions.

As I pruned and clipped and crafted, a trove of related memories gushed to the surface, ready to be recorded for use in other stories or an expansion of this one. “Start small, grow big.” As I delved, I got deeply in touch with my insecure young self, realizing how much I didn’t yet know (and he probably didn’t either!). All that angst, that longing, came flooding back. This was beyond the usual concern with truth and general memoir considerations. I  urge you to have fun with flash memoir and use it to hone your editing skills. 

By the way, I did not do all this editing in a vacuum. I shared the story with a group who pointed out rough spots I had not noticed. Never underestimate the power of a group for fine tuning stories.

Write now: think of a micro-memory and draft a flash memoir of at least 100 words, but not more than 1000. Practice focus in every respect – content, wording, and description. 

Writing Prompts Aren’t Just for Beginners

No matter how long we’ve been writing, free writing, writing practice, and writing prompts remain a powerful source of inspiration. Some prompts come from books, some from websites, some from writing groups or friends, but some of the most important come from our thoughts. I was reminded of this when I found the following email snippet from my writing buddy, JS:

I was thinking last night about shaving and decided I’d write a little bit about it. I thought maybe I’d write about ten sentences. As soon as I started writing, I remembered all sorts of things I hadn’t thought about for years. I remembered how my father used to use his shaving brush to stir up some lather in his mug of shaving soap. He’d lather me and let me pretend to shave with a bladeless razor. I remembered starting to shave for real, lots of different kinds of razors, blades and electric, and barbers I’ve gone to, and how they nearly shaved my head in the Army, and all that stuff. I wrote for nearly and hour and really had fun with it. There’ some great story starts in that mess. 

This email snippet also reminded me that listening to those tiny whispers when we start thinking about “the olden days” can yield fascinating stories. It’s also great sport, like having a family reunion with memories and you get to tell al the stories. It can also lead to fame, if not fortune. JS lives in a retirement community that publishes an occasional anthology of poems, pictures and pieces of work written by residents. He submitted an essay based on the ramblings in that memory dump. He’s become a local celebrity there and heard lots of shaving jokes and stories for some time after his essay appeared.

Snippets like his are rewarding for several reasons:

• Without his essay, his great-grandchildren may never know about shaving mugs and brushes and blades that were sharpened for reuse.
• Writing about memories like these helps focus on them and renews a sense of connection with the past.
• Collecting a number of related memories can help you see patterns and connections you never noticed, sometimes solving several minor mysteries of life.
• Sharing memory stories builds community.
• It’s fun!

We all have little daily things that bring back memories. My kitchen is haunted with memories. Two of my three cast iron skillets were wedding gifts from my grandmother. I’ve used them nearly every day for over fifty years now and thought of her nearly every time I pull one out. I have pie plates, tea strainers and other gizmos of my mothers. Peeling potatoes or carrots, making meatloaf or enchiladas, even filling the sink with soapy water brings back memories. Some of them go back to childhood, some are more recent.

I’ve written about some. After reading that email from JS, I’m motivated to write more about daily life, probably contrasting then and now.

In fact, I just stopped and filled a long Evernote with prompts that sprang to mind that I can use some morning soon when I sit down to journal and inspiration has run dry. That happens.

Write now: Call up a recent memory of times past and things you used to do. Jot down a few key concepts, then spend ten minutes (more if you get into the swing of things and don’t want to stop) and write about one of them. Start paying attention to those mental riffs and capture some writing prompts. Go back over your free-writing material and find some juicy material to develop into an essay or story.  

Photo adapted from work published by Phyllis Buchanan under a Creative Commons license.

From Journal to Memoir

“I have piles of old journals. Can I use those as my memoir?”

This question comes up in almost every class I teach. The short answer is “No. But you can use those journal entries as a resource.” Here’s why and how.

Take a look at the Tree of Life Writing image in the right sidebar. Notice that Journal Entries fall at the foot, below the ground, out of sight and light. Those journal entries feed into Story, that appears first as Essays and Stories. Those component stories and essays feed into the composite Memoir.

If you are using your journal to best advantage, you write with no boundaries. Your entries may ramble. They may not be coherent. You may omit detail or obsessively dwell on detail. You may write things that will send certain relationships up in flames if you don’t consign those pages to flames before anyone reads them. You may reveal things to those pages that would embarrass you or others, or betray their confidence.

But aside from all that, reading journal entries is usually boring or confusing  for anyone other than the author. In our journals we repeat things, perhaps to the point of obsession and stuckness. We report conclusions and assumptions. We nearly always confine journaling to “telling.”

So how do you convert that material?

Start with lists of key memories and arrange them on a timeline. Then pick one of those memories and find journal entries about that event or the general time period. Read those entries to refresh your memory about details. Use them to get back into the scene. You’ll probably need to sink back into the moment, because you probably didn’t record many sensory details, but recalling the emotions and actions you did record should help you recall the rest.

Write a story about that memory, adding details evoked by your journal entries. In the story you show the action. You describe the setting and other characters(remember, characters may include animals, inanimate objects, nature, place, or other aspects of yourself as well as other people). You use sensory details to get readers as fully involved with the situation as you were.

Your story includes action that ideally involves some uncertainty and tension or conflict. Dialogue is not an absolute requirement, but even if you are the only person around, you can include at least a bit. Have conversations with yourself.

Each sensory detail, each bit of dialogue and aspect of action activates an additional sensory area in readers’ brains and adds a layer of realism to your story, bringing it alive in readers’ minds.

One more layer of realism may come directly from your journal. That’s the element of reflection. Readers want to know more than what happened. They want to know what that meant to you, how it affected you. That’s where those journal entries come in.

On rare occasions you may want to directly quote journal entries. At times, quoting from your journal may add a touch more credibility to your reports of how you reacted at the time, and some snippets may be lyrical and compelling. Use these suggested guidelines to effectively incorporate journal material:

• Use them sparingly. Don’t let them be a crutch for “telling” rather than “showing.”
• Prune them to laser sharp  focus. Use ellipses (...) to show that you’ve omitted material before or after the quoted material, or even within.
• Create composite entries. Some people may have a problem with using journal entries that are not verbatim quotations. This is a matter of personal judgment. Many of us consider journal entries to be similar to dialogue. The intent of the message is more important than literal accuracy. So if you need to distill three or more entries into a single one to give the drift of your thoughts at that period of time, do so and avoid overwhelming readers with what may seem like tedious navel gazing.

So, yes, you can use your journals, but use them primarily as resource material rather than verbatim story elements.

Write now: scan through an old journal and find a juicy memory topic with several related entries. Immerse yourself in those entries to recall your sense of the times and your state of mind. Bring the setting into memory as clearly as you can and notice elements of the setting. What was going on? What were people thinking or doing. What did you notice about the situation? Then use this awareness to write a short story or scene based on that memory, incorporating the details you recall and personal insight you recorded.

Story Album to Memoir

Adventures of a Chilehead initially began as a simple story album – a term I use in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing to describe a collection of free-standing short stories. But a funny thing happened as I began assembling the loose stories into a document: they evolved into a memoir. Here’s how.

I began with three stories, two of which appeared in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. I’d already written the third back then, but decided to save it for later. Through the years I wrote other stories on this theme. When I put the collection together for this album and arranged them in chronological order, I thought of a couple more. As I wrote and edited, I shared each story with a writing group.

“Great story, but tell us more about this, this and that,” they said. “This line would sound smoother like so.” I love my writing group. My writing is always better with their help! Although they hadn’t said it in so many words, they wanted more reflection, They wanted to know what I was thinking, what the experiences meant to me. They wanted reflection. Oh, yes! That’s something I teach and advise others to include. But it’s easy to overlook in my own stories.

Adding reflection forced me to explore simple stories and memories more deeply, to dig for more significance. I had to confront the key question: why do I love chile so much? Why do I keep scorching my mouth? And what else was going on that made those stories stick in memory? The answer was a little different each time, and it made the stories richer.

Another aspect of the collection the group didn’t see was overlap among the stories. Some stories have short flashbacks to previous memories. In a collection, such shared stories should be told in full only once. Later stories can refer to them in passing as “the time my father …” without repeating the details. I pruned that overlap and tucked in a few mini-memories to add further insight and interest.

As I continue to fine-tune those stories, working on the reflection and thinking from one story to the next along the time line, a story arc gradually emerged. My thoughts and preferences have evolved over time. I have evolved from girl to grandmother with the perspective of several decades. With no specific intention, this project has organically morphed into memoir with continuity, focus, and evolution of the story.

At first I was reluctant to add much reflection. The original stories were funny. I often read the unpublished third at public events and it’s hard to keep from laughing myself. Would I lose that comic edge?

Simple story albums need no conclusion, but an integrated collection or memoir needs resolution. That concluding chapter gave me fits. Then I had one more adventure that I would never have recognized as such if I hadn’t been working on this chapter. After a dozen false starts, a very different story emerged. Meaning became laser clear. Whether anyone ever reads this memoir or not, my life is richer for that.

More work remains to be done before the project is finished. I’ll keep you posted.

Write now:  select an assortment of stories you have written and assemble them into a story album. If you have several on a theme, so much the better. Or maybe you have several from the same time era. Read through them all at one time and see what else comes to mind. Perhaps it will remain a simple short story collection, but you may find it becomes something more.

Merging Life with Fiction

Today we have another international visitor, and a topic with an unusual twist. Mary Hamer explains how writing a historical novel, Kipling & Trix, gave her the opportunity to creatively showcase some personal experience in a setting that may be a more effective than memoir. Read on to learn how this is relevant for memoir writers.

It’s a challenge, writing memoir, to make all the other characters interesting, not just darling moi. One that’s especially hard when we’re writing about experience that’s been difficult or painful. How to give a rounded account, how to keep a balance? Avoid presenting ourselves as the sad victim or proud hero? As readers we all know what a turn-off that can be. And yet we want, we need to write into those painful experiences we’ve had to overcome. They’ve helped to make us who we are.

And they’re powerful: young film-makers in LA used to be told to think of the worst thing that had ever happened to them: and then find a metaphor for it, make a film about that. I’ve got a tip rather like that for memoirists. An exercise you might find helpful. It comes out of my experience of writing Kipling & Trix, my novel about the writer, Rudyard Kipling and his sister, Trix. When I realised that I too had been through an early experience that marked them, I felt I had what it took to tell their story.

Let me explain.

When these two were small—he was just coming up to six and she was three—their parents left them with strangers and went back to India. They meant it all for the best: India’s climate and fevers were dangerous for European children. All the British sent theirs back, if they possibly could. What was unusual in the case of Ruddy and Trix, though, was the treatment they got from the foster-mother their parents left them with.

This woman introduced terror into their lives. When she threatened them, vulnerable as they were, with Hell and the eternal flames in which they would be punished, how could they not be overwhelmed? They’d never heard of Hell, or heaven, for that matter. I’m sure the woman believed, like their parents, that she was acting in the children’s best interests, though she can’t have had much of an instinct for childcare or much understanding of her own desire for power and control.

We have testimony concerning the damage this caused. At the age of seventy, writing his own memoir, Something of Myself, Rudyard Kipling was bitter about the fear and confusion planted in him at that time. His sister, Trix, never recognised her own confusion. Worse, she lived it and acted it out. You don’t have to be a therapist to make a connection between the impact of those early experiences on a developing three-year-old brain and the string of later breakdowns that Trix suffered.

As a child, I too had shared a similar experience, though it was decades before I understood how it had affected me. Then, at a time when I’d been working on a book about trauma, so knew enough to take them seriously, I had a flashback. Until then the memory of my Irish mother teaching me about Hell when I was small had always been quite neutral. Without warning, the emotion which had been missing from that memory returned and I found myself dizzy with shock, disoriented, lost. I was back in the body and mind of my five-year-old self.

From that moment, I knew the power of such teaching to undermine. Imagine then how I sat up, reading Kipling’s angry memory of being subjected to the same experience! I’d been studying his life, wanting to write about him but not sure whether I could find anything new to say. There are several excellent biographies. I certainly hadn’t fancied adding to them—all those footnotes! Now I had a new and original angle. One that made sense of Kipling’s lifelong battle with depression and his compulsion to write, to imagine his way out of pain. I decided to write his life in the form of fiction so I could position readers to enter his inner world and understand him from the inside.

I found his sister’s experience just as compelling. Trying to repair ourselves by writing seems to be instinctive. Like her brother, Trix wanted to write. She did succeed in publishing two novels with a number of stories and poems. But over time she lost confidence in her own voice. As a woman writer it was all too easy for me to identify with Trix. Inventing scenes of exhilaration and passages of writer’s block came readily! But I do believe that the story I’ve told about Trix in my novel, tracing her long struggle, is more powerful, more just to the trouble she caused and above all more interesting than any doleful account of my own fight to keep writing.

So where’s the tip for you memoirists out there? Look around. See whether there’s someone else’s story that resonates with your bad stuff. Try telling their story, instead of your own. You could make it an exercise: just a scene, a passage of dialogue. Make it really embodied, concrete, not just inside heads. You may discover fresh perspectives. Better still, you might decide that their story is something you could tell really well, using what you know from your own experience. Why not run with that?

Mary Hamer was born in Birmingham, UK. She has published four books of non-fiction, having spent years teaching in the university. She is married, with grownup children and seven grandchildren. Kipling and Trix is her first novel, and it received the Virgina Prize for Fiction in 2012. Mary’s website: http://mary-hamer.com/

Valentine Memory Whispers

When I think of Valentine’s Day, I always think of red heart boxes full of chocolate candy. When I was young, my father always gave a great big box of candy to my mother, and smaller boxes, with half a dozen pieces each to my sister and me. I always ate all of mine right then and there, and nibbled from Mother’s until it was gone too.

But I have many more Valentine’s Day memories. For example, I remember decorating shoeboxes each year for classmates to fill with valentines. That was a tense situation. Back then there was no mandate that you had to bring one for each person in the class, and somehow everyone seemed to know how many who got, and who gave which to whom. I always groaned inwardly when I counted and found a shortfall. It didn’t matter that only one person ever got a card from everyone in our class. I wanted to be in that category too, and I wasn’t!

Did I remember on those Valentine’s Days that there were always one or two people I simply could not bring myself to address cards to? Why would I have thought I’d get one from everyone when I didn’t give one to everyone?

Embedding questions and reflections like that adds juice to a story or memoir, and they aren’t always easy to answer. It takes a bit off practice to even recognize those whispery thoughts that arise as we write – they are easy to ignore, but worth heeding. They add a “mystery ingredient” to stories. When you capture one of these thoughts, take a break from writing  for a bit of memory analysis.

My example

I close my eyes, lean back, and picture myself sitting at our gray limed-oak dining room table, staring out the window at the sky. The table surface is just below armpit level, so my arms stretch straight out. A dittoed list of classmates is on my left. A pile of valentines from the bag I bought for a dollar at Draggon Drug is spread out before me.

These are so dumb. Nobody talks like that, I think as I flip through them. That’s actually part of their effectiveness. Nobody really talks this way, so nobody will take them seriously. I know it’s just a game we play to be nice and fit in, and oh, how I want to fit in! It’s not easy, but I work my way down the list, picking a card for each, signing my name, and addressing the flimsy envelopes. I draw a line through each name as I finish. I’m pleased with my progress.

Then I come to a name that stops me cold. Wilber Winslow (name changed to protect the guilty) is such a creep! I’ll throw up if I have to give him a card, even if I could find one that says “Roses are red, violets are blue, reform school’s the place, for people like you.”

I know he won’t give me a card, so why humiliate myself by giving him one when I know I won’t get one in return? I’m in proactive self-defense mode.  A girl has to have some self-respect.

Yes, there’s my answer. I knew I wouldn’t get cards from everyone, and I’ve gotten in touch with my inner Mean Girl and the angst and frustration of fourth grade.

That’s a more interesting story and perhaps more helpful to my grandchildren, one of whom just worked through a similar situation, but with a difference. In this enlightened era, in her school, they are required to give a valentine to each member of the class – even the bratty boy who teases her mercilessly behind the teacher’s back. But that’s her story to write when she grows up.

Write now: think of a tense situation in your past and try re-entering the scene. Think it through. What do you see? What do you hear? What are you thinking? What story are you telling yourself? Write about it. 

Photo credit: Dan4th Nicholas

The Perfect Christmas Tree

A story of Christmas Past

I stare with disappointment at the tree in our 1958 living room that we decorated two days ago. It looks utterly pitiful — like it’s made from Tinkertoys. The flat-needled branches are sparse, and it has no fragrance. I face the ugly truth: I do not like this tree. I fight growing disappointment with the whole season, wishing it would just be over.

Just then Mother comes home from work, wrestling a huge spruce through the door. It’s almost as wide as it is tall. “Nobody else at school wanted this, so I brought it home,” she explains. Its fragrance instantly fills the house. In meer minutes my sister and I strip the puny tree and the lush new one stands in its place. Santa’s crew of elves couldn’t decorate a tree better or faster than we do. When we finish, we catch our breath in awe. The tree glows with more than colored lights. It glows with Christmas Spirit. With joyful hearts, she and I load the record player and sing our hearts out.

The next day Daddy saws up the old tree and stuffs it in the fireplace. I’m torn at the seeming brutality of burning this poor tree because it wasn’t beautiful enough. I feel more than a little guilty at rejecting it for the sake of appearances. Then I look at the new one and relax —we didn’t deliberately go looking for it. It was a gift, a gift of abundance in this season of blessing. It was a gift of Christmas Spirit, something lacking in the first tree. This is the perfect Christmas tree, and I know it will never be matched in all my years.

“Thank you for yielding your place so gracefully,” I whisper into the flames, grateful that at least the meager tree can give us the gift of warmth to help us enjoy its replacement.

All these years later, I look at our dense, perfectly shaped artificial tree with vague disappointment, then realize it’s the best tree it can be. Not even a fresh tree could live up to the legendary Perfect Christmas Tree. “Thank you for giving us joy each year and being so dependable and easy to live with. And especially, thank you for not dropping needles all over the floor!”

This simple memoir story has become part of my Christmas Tradition, to be handed down through generations. Each year it seems to take on new meaning and become richer. Others read the story and find their own meaning. I’m glad of that, but primarily I wrote the story for myself. It’s a reminder of the day I realized something important as I sat in front of that fireplace. That day was a rite of passage. Each time I read the story, I learn the lessons of gratitude, compassion and purpose more deeply and fully, and the spirit of that lush, amazing replacement tree will always fill my heart.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone.

Write now: Take a few minutes and write about some meaningful Christmas memory – or some other holiday memory if your tradition celebrates another time. Keep this story and reflect on it each year. Edit as your understanding grows. Over the years it will become rich and deep, full of meaning and inspiration, primarily for you, but also for others.