Ep 117: How to Dredge up the Memories You Want to Write About
Last time we talked about taking a cue from Dani Shapiro and attempting to tell the story as we\u2019re inside of it\u2014potentially before the story has become a story. This requires us to write about life as it\u2019s unfolding, trying to find the story in the actions and interactions that take place. We begin \u201ccapturing the living moments,\u201d to borrow a phrase from Anais Nin.\n\n\n\nWhat if the events we want to write about took place long ago, before we thought about writing anything down? What if we must rely entirely on memory for material?\n\n\n\nIt's in Us\n\n\n\nAfter all, most formative experiences smack us, scar us, and sink into our core in the early years. As Flannery O\u2019Connor said, \u201cAnybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days" (84, Mystery and Manners)\n\n\n\nAnd Willa Cather said in an interview, "I think that most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. That's the important period: when one's not writing. Those years determine whether one's work will be poor and thin or rich and fine.\u201d\n\n\n\nIf that\u2019s true, all that we need to write short- and long-form memoir is in us. Somewhere.\n\n\n\nHow to Dredge Up Memories\n\n\n\nHow do we get to those long-ago memories? How do we bring up the sensory details that will help us recreate scenes? How can we reach the names of the people with us that day on the farm or what color the wallpaper was in the room where an argument took place? Is there a way to recreate sequence and timelines? Can our minds still hear the tap of a pencil against the desk? Or was it a pen?\n\n\n\nDorothea Brande's 30-Minute Memory Break and Artistic Coma\n\n\n\nOne method for dredging up memories you want to write about is to set aside time to recall.\n\n\n\nRecalling allows us to draw from our reservoir of memories, those moments when we\u2019ve noticed and retained something in the past\u2014something worth revisiting.\n\n\n\nDorothea Brande suggests a simple way to engage memory:\n\n\n\n\n[S]et...a short period each day when you will, by taking thought, recapture a childlike \u201cinnocence of eye.\u201d For half an hour each day transport yourself back to the state of wide-eyed interest that was yours at the age of five. Even though you feel a little self-conscious about doing something so deliberately that was once as unnoticed as breathing, you will still find that you are able to gather stores of new material in a short time.\n\n\n\n\nShe also recommends an \u201cartistic coma,\u201d and these two ideas could work in tandem\u2014lie down for about 30 minutes and let go of all distractions. That quieted, almost comatose, state can create receptivity to the images, sounds, textures, and people of the past.\n\n\n\nWhen that material emerges during the quiet\u2014some of it stepping out of the swamp of the past, dripping with muck\u2014it\u2019s time to write. Write fast. Write everything you\u2019re given, because those slippery memories will slip away again again if they aren't captured.\n\n\n\nBill Roorbach: Write to Release\n\n\n\nWhile Brande recommends a time of recall to tease out memories followed by the act of writing, Bill Roorbach says memories can bubble to the surface as we write. In his book Writing Life Stories, he claims:\n\n\n\n\nOne of the many curious things about the act of writing is the way it can give access to the unconscious mind. And in the hidden parts of consciousness lie not only hobgoblins and neurotic glimmers, but lots of regular stuff, the everyday stuff of memory. The invisible face of your grade school bully is in there, somewhere, and the exact smell of the flowers on vines in your grandma\u2019s backyard, along with most everything else. (19, Writing Life Stories)\n\n\n\n\nWith this method, start writing and trust that the memories hidden in the recesses of your unconscious mind will rise up as your pen covers the page or your fingers fly across the keyboard.\n\n\n\nTry Both\n\n\n\nTry both methods of recalling the past.\n\n\n\nYou can start with Roorbach\u2019s method as soon as you\u2019re done reading this piece.