Old memories are a gold mine for our writing

Old memories are often highly charged whether they are good, bad or ugly. Those that come to mind again and again have so much energy in them
that they're easily adapted in bits and pieces into one's writing. Sometimes, a long memory becomes a short scene in a novel, possibly only a few lines, that would be totally unrecognizable to the others involved. Sometimes short memories become catalysts for articles or poems.

When memories haunt me, embarrass me, or amuse me for years, they're usually tied deeply to my focus on life. There's a reason why I remember a dance with one girl and not with another. There's a reason why certain conversations from years ago return to mind again and again. Or, perhaps why some faces are so easy to remember while others are harder to recall.

Sometimes I know why old memories are clear: they speak strongly about my preoccupations, my avocations, my hobbies and my life's course. Other memories that are just as clear seem to have no clear reason for coming up in my thoughts as often as they do. Writers use these memories as part of the gold mine of "writing what you know."

I was once part of a search party for some missing children in a large, lake-side state park. I not only saw volunteers were mobilized and how the search was conducted, but a variety of emotions went through my head in the process and as those of us who hadn't met before that night talked about what we were doing and how hopeful we were that the missing children would be found at any moment. Unfortunately, the children drowned and I remember how I felt when I first heard the news and how the spirit just went out of everyone in the group like air from a punctured balloon and people grew quiet and started drifting off to their homes.

Bits and pieces of this experience have made their way into my writing over the years, but each of them is such a small fragment of the whole that anyone reading this short account of the even here wouldn't recognize the source. That's the point, for me anyway. When I'm writing and need an expression, an emotion, a detail, a line of conversation, or even a fact, my memories become rather like a large, searchable database and remind me that I often know more than I think about one thing or another.

Many of us remember our first girl friend or boy friend, the day we joined the service, the day we got fired for a job or went to a disastrous party or dance, times when we shot off our mouths and got in trouble, and times when we succeeded more than we ever expected.

When writers start off to "write what they know," they often think only of their careers and major experiences. If you were a forest ranger or a
policeman for 20 years, you think that's what you know. If you taught at a college, you think that's what you know. And you do know that very well.

But the memories that come back to us again and again are also a vast storehouse of what we know. We know they're strong stuff or we would have forgotten them. They may relate to events that lasted for only a few minutes or a couple of hours. Their potency is a key to their strength and how powerful they can become when transformed onto the printed page.

A dance with a woman who's long forgotten my name, random snippets from the lobby of a historic hotel, conversations on an aircraft carrier, conversations around campfires, views from high country ridges, this and that from boot camp--such things come to mind with the clarity of yesterday and lend themselves very well to capturing moments in poems, stories and articles that I never knew I would write when the long-ago event actually occurred.

(from Writer's Notebook)

Nice!

Malcom,

http://www.southtownrinkydinks.com

So well he puts it.

Malcolm,
lots of good thoughts. The past is the subject of my next book and memories are still very clear. Funny how they surface when we need them. I suppose that is a function of the subconscious. Going with a hunch is often a good choice.

Thanks, everyone. Don, that's one cool photo with the old Gulf station; it reminds me of the way gas stations were when I had my first car, a 1954 Chevy that saw more of North Florida in a week than my parents' car saw in a year. Thanks for the link.

I discovered, Abe, that a memory fragment often grows larger as I begin to write about it; suddenly, I know other stuff that hadn't remembered for years.

Malcolm

Malcolm,

That was fantastic.

You are right about the memories.

When I was in high school, the assignment was to write an autobiography. Mine included a whole lot about how boring my life was, why I couldn't complete this assignment as others probably could because my life had been so ordinary. (I did get a respectable grade.)

But my books have included all sorts of things from my childhood, my family, things that were there but I didn't realize their importance until later in life.

Carol

Deleted from here and my computer.

Saving the trees.

I wrote this to Alice this morning:

I am reading a great book I have from 1989, titled On Being a Writer. It is written from interviews with famous writers.

Harlan Ellison said,

“Without truth, my truth, the only truth I know, it’s all a gambol in the pasture without rhythm or sense. It’s empty. God gave it to me (so help me, Deist or no, I believe that!) and I can’t cheat myself or you or them or anyone by not doing it the best way I know how.

“That’s the heart and head of the writer, to set it all down before they put him down in the hole. To get it all out the right way, the best way, the truest way you know how.”

Now that’s where I am. That’s where Lane was, and I don’t think he was finished writing. But hopefully his friend has a lot of Lane’s writing and can get it published, or write a biography, and get it out in the world. And above will be the message I take from Lane as a writer, to get it down in writing before it is too late.

As someone floundering around for a mission for the rest of my life, above is the one I’ve settled on, to get all these words down before they “put me in the hole” or rather throw my ashes to the wind in the woods.

And I know I have you cheering me on no matter whether my writing ever goes anywhere further than my computer. And I love your book, and your humorous writing on the messageboard. Everyone has a niche and we’ve got ours!!

And now I add, Alice, I love it. Keep writing. You have much to write about as we all do.

Love ya, Carol

Deleted from here and my computer.

Saved aother tree.

The book will never be. I am no writer and in dire need of an editor--not just any editor.

An editor who is an excellent writer. Don't bother trying to fix it or even to read it.

Malcolms idea about, memories is a good one.

I already offered to be your editor -- you turned me down.

Alice, your comments remind me of all the times I tried to keep a journal, thinking some day I'm going to want some facts about this time of my life. I always quit within a week or so. I wish I had written more stuff down in my Bluehorse notebooks.

Right, Carol, later on, all that stuff doesn't lookw so boring.

Malcolm

Shelagh wrote:

I already offered to be your editor -- you turned me down.

Shelagh,

You are a dear. I want you to work on your best seller--not my gunk.

Malcolm, I have found that short mysteries set in the 1930s and '40s sell and are popular. Fortunately I have a good memory so most of the fiction I write is set in that period. A lot of good stuff always comes to mind but I still hit the library to view old newspapers just to come up with little tidbits like the 1937 trial in Tennessee when a teacher spanked a 9-year-old female pupil and was sued by her husband. He said, "It's not right for a man to spank another man's wife."

You are too funny - or tragic. Unfortunately, my memories don't start in that era, so I'm short on luck there. Most of my crisp memories are the late sixties through the late 70's. From then on, it gets blurry except for a few months in 1988 when I was alone on a sailboat in the Bahamas for six months. Every minute of that experience is clear as a bell.

Dear Alice,
I like your memories. There is nothing wrong with your prose, either. Perhaps you are a blurter, like me. I think a lot a great authors were just blurters, and then, and then they had some editor they did not know that just put in the punctuation and eliminated the superlative stuff, the extra ands and buts and commas and it all comes out saying just what you said, only better.

Shelagh, any time you feel like do the editing of Wooffer, I would pay.

Love,
Betty

Not too many years ago, my kids and I returned to Orange for a family reunion. We all took one car from Houston. My son David was driving. As we were approaching home, he said something about being low on gas. I said, "Just turn into the Gulf station." "The what station??" The Gulf station!" as I gestured toward the sign that had said Chevron for some years. My son, the soul of discretion, just said, "Oh, yeah. That Gulf station."



Thanks for the memory.

Ann

Betty, be careful about editing Woofer. It could lose its charm. Shelagh would be a good one, but I'd hate to see much editing.

In a way, Marie, those memories make everything slightly autobiographical.

Malcolm

Old memories eh! Well I know I have a few laying around somewhere. If only I could remember where I put them!
I guess I wont be writng anything Gold then.
Sorry what were we saying? Oh yes memories what exactly are those then?? I've forgotten.

Okay, Betty, send a word document of Wooffer. Don't worry, Dick, you'll hardly notice I've been there.

I hope this is the second volume. I loved the first volume.

Dmondeo, you are something else. Remember when people used to say that? Oh, I forgot. . .

Now Dick I can tell a trick question when I see one. If I answer "yes I remember that Dick", that sort of exposes my poor memory excuse and people will find out it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be. Doh! oh bugger!