Lasting Legacies Articles

Five Ideas to Get You Started

Plenty of us have had this experience:  You want to write your life history—or at least, part of it. Fighting off the urge to go fishing instead, you sit down with a computer or notebook in front of you.  You stare at the blank page for a few minutes, then wander into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and never return.  Don’t despair!  There is hope.  The decades you’ve lived so far are brimming with interesting stories.  So, grab your coffee and get back to your task.  Here are five sure-fire ways to start your memories flowing.

1.  Start with a photograph.  Set a timer and give yourself five minutes to go through some of your old photographs and choose one that you’d like to turn into a story.  Resist the temptation to spend more than five minutes choosing a photo.  Take your photo and make a list of all the surface things you remember about it:  date, names, place, occasion, and so forth.  Next, ask yourself some deeper questions about it.  What events led up to the event in the photograph?  What events resulted from it?  How did it make you feel?  Did the event teach you anything important, or change you in some way?  Did it affect any relationships?  How?  What smells and sounds do you associate with the event or place?   Use your answers to begin writing your story.

2.  Host a gathering of friends or family with the express purpose of gathering memories.  Invite your siblings, cousins, or old friends.  Over coffee or drinks, talk about your shared experiences.  Assign someone to take notes, or record the conversation.  Anything that starts “Remember that time…” is likely to make a great foundation for a written story.  This method is especially good if you want to find something funny to write about.

3.  Make a memory map.  Draw a circle in the middle of a blank sheet of paper. Inside the circle, write “Age 12”.  In the area around the circle, jot down bits of information you remember about that year of your life: brown house, Coach Jones, first crush, whatever comes to you.  Circle each of those items.  Now, focus on each of those items and surround them with connected memories.  For example, you may surround “first crush” with words like “basketball game,” “sock hop,” “pink hair ribbon,” or “Old Spice”.  Tape your memory map to the wall in front of your writing desk.  Look up at it for inspiration whenever you get stuck.

4.  Just start writing.  You may think the only logical way to proceed is to remember your stories, then write them down.  Actually, the opposite is often true.  Something about the act of writing unlocks hidden details stored away in your brain.  Over and over I have heard people say, “Once I started writing, I couldn’t believe how many memories came flooding back!”  Don’t worry about making it perfect.  Just get as much down on paper as you can.  Later, you can go back and refine your story by switching words around and checking your grammar and spelling.

5.  Be interviewed.  Find someone skilled at asking open-ended, probing questions designed to take the bare bones of a memory and flesh it out into a full story.  Maybe you know someone who can do this with you and record your conversations so that you can use them later.  Or, hire a personal historian to elicit your stories and put them down on paper for you.  Then go fishing.

Author: Linda Smith

12-21-2007

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