Writing Your Life Story Part 11: Travel and Memoir

Wandering in Bumpass Hell

Lassen Explores © 2013 Bo Mackison

Travel is on my mind.

Recently I’ve been consulting maps, researching places to visit, adding up miles for potential drives, and making camping reservations in parks throughout the American West. And last year I traveled over 5,000 miles and visited a twenty National Parks. So it is no wonder that travel would show up in a memoir project.

Travel memoirs come in all sizes and shapes.

A weekend exploring the jazz scene in the big city. A week rafting the Grand Canyon with fellow adventurers. A month touring wine country in Italy and learning the trade from vintners. All kinds of travel can provide moments worth writing about, worth capturing for posterity.

I have found in the past, though, that trying to recall travel memories can be unexpectedly difficult. After taking long vacations each year with my family for nearly a decade, our itineraries seemed to be hopeless puzzles. We had lots of memories, but often we remembered events and places differently, or not at all.

A few years ago I decided to begin taking notes during my trip for future reference, but I knew I’d sometimes not have time or inclination to write in a daily travel journal. Still, I needed a routine.

I came up with various techniques for documenting where I go and what I do when traveling.

Here are a few techniques to try:

  • I discovered, while driving cross-country, we had many questions about the areas we drove through, but we would forget to look up the answers. Once I realized this, I found an easy solution. I purchased an up to date atlas when we took trips involving lots of driving time and destinations. As I checked directions and followed the map, I wrote any questions we asked on the map itself. When we had questions about the Nebraska Sandhills, I wrote our questions near the sandhills location on the map.  When we wanted to know the difference between a wash and an arroyo, I wrote the question in the margin of the Arizona state map.
    • All of the questions were in one easy, accessible place, and once we returned home, we spent an evening looking up the answers on the internet. And as an added bonus, we answered the questions on the map, and added the annotated map to out vacation memorabilia.
  • It is also easy to highlight your route in the atlas or on a map with a bright-colored marker, add dates, even write notes about campgrounds, hotels, restaurants, tours, museums, parks, etc.
  • When traveling, tour brochures or city guides are easy to collect, but also easy to misplace. I now pack an empty tote bag, and whenever we pick up information, the travel papers all go in one place. Not only is there less clutter, but all the information is in one place when we arrive home. Then it is easy to refer to the various maps and guides when I need information at a later time.
  • I take photos of information signs, hotel and restaurant names, and other interpretive signs. Since I always carry a camera, especially on hikes or tours, I find this an easy way to capture names, places, and information I might otherwise forget.

Travel adds a special dimension to our lives, but with new activities and sights packed into a short time, it is easy to forget the details.

Taking a few moments to jot down new information on a map, collect brochures, or photograph important signs will give you plenty of memory joggers when it is time to capture your experiences in writing.

Writing Your Life Story Part 10: Harmony – A Memoir Writing Prompt

Hens and Chicks

Zen Garden © 2012 Bo Mackison

There are times when writing is like singing a favorite song — the pen can barely keep up with the hand as words fly onto the paper.

But at other times, writing is more akin to singing a dirge — thoughts come slowly, none of the words make sense, and the writing rhythm gets lost before the first sentences are recorded. When writing becomes work instead of fun, I often search for a word in the dictionary to get me started – a habit I learned from a high school English teacher.

As I was considering a list of ideas for the Memoir Project, each idea took off but then sputtered to the ground. I decided I needed a prompt to get me started. I looked in the dictionary and chose the word harmony.

Here are a several prompts to prime your writing pump, and start your memories flowing.

  • Albert Einstein is famous for many things, including being the author of many wise words. One of his more famous quotes is:

“There are three rules of work. Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~Einstein

Can you recall a time in your life when you were able to find harmony in discord?

  • One often associates the word harmony with music. Music is a wonderful prompter of memories. Think of a popular song from your youth or from the present times. Can you associate any memories with that song?
  • Have you ever sung in a choir? There’s a lot of harmony going on in a choir — and in more ways than just the melody. Experiences where people join together to do what they love often bring about close, lasting relationships. And shared moments, some happy, some poignant, some nerve-wracking, but usually group experiences are filled with life lessons. Do you have a choir story — and a life lesson — worth sharing?
  • When people gather together, even in informal groups, there is often a lot of singing going on. It might not be quite the harmonious singing from an organized musical group, but the lessons learned and the stories shared are no less important. Traditional songs and family favorites are passed on to young children. Older kids and families sing together spontaneously. Teenagers form bands in order to express themselves. On and on through life, we share experiences with other people with song.

Set your timer for ten minutes and compile a list — don’t give it much thought, use a speedy pen.

Keep writing — of times when music played a role in your life, any kind of role. I’ll share the beginnings of my list as an example:

  • Singing in the backyard while I was swinging. I was maybe 8 or 10. Tried to keep the rhythm of my singing even with my swinging. Went to a Catholic grade school – we were practicing hymns for a special concert and for weeks I sang the hymn Ave Maria while swinging. Until I saw the neighbor lady watching me through her curtained window, shaking her head in disbelief at my irreverence. I felt guilty for weeks — until I went to confession and the priest told me “God loves all kinds of singing.”
  • My sister, born when I was nine years old. My grandmother sang lovely German lullabies to her, ones I also wanted to sing, but I couldn’t manage the German words. I pretended instead… and insisted to my friends that I could sing in German. Then the mother of one of my friends spoke to me in fluent German. Oops!
  • Vacation trips with my three kids in the car for weeks at a time. As preteens and young teens, they would get out of sorts when we were heading to a far destination. We made up a game involving singing musicals — any musical counted, from Broadway to Disney. We all took turns, parents played too, or it wasn’t as much fun. Almost any singing counted. A few words and some humming. La la la’a. As long as it was recognizable. We would go ’round and ’round for hours — yes, hours — each taking a turn singing. Lots of laughing, too. Played this game for years. Still play it once in a great while. One of kids’ favorite vacation memories.

Go ahead. Set your timer and give it a try.

If the word harmony doesn’t provide you with the proper inspiration, then do as Sister Mary Gabriel did when I was in high school English class. Pull out a dictionary or other handy book. Open a page. Point to a word. Then start to write, using your dictionary word as a prompt. Ten minutes. No stopping.

You never know when mining for words will provide that perfect start-up for an addition to your Memoir Project.

Writing Your Life Story Part 9: Memoir and Photography (Option #2)

This memoir project combines photography and writing, and focusing on the present.

The first option focused on taking photographs of your activities during one day. The second option encourages you to take a photo whenever you come across a “favorite” in your day — no schedule, just serendipity. Take photos over the course of a week, or a month, or on a continual basis.

Imagine having a collection of photos documenting what you love. What would a set of those photos tell you about yourself?

OPTION #2: FAVORITES

Desert Views, The Second Month

Summer Books © 2010 Bo Mackison

Take a photo of the your current collection of favorite books.

Take a photo of the books you own written by a favorite author. What makes this author special? Why are you attracted to his or her books? Is it the topic, the location, the genre, the authors way with words?

Take a photo of the clothes in your closet.

Take a photo of your favorite comfort outfit. And while you are rummaging in your closet, pull out your favorite dressy dress, your grungiest sweats, your reddest blouse, and the robe you still wear that you bought to wear your freshman year in college. Your favorite clothes are you. Take photos. Write a few notes, too. For example, why do you love your old robe so much? How do you feel when you wear your dressiest dress?

Take a photo of the most beloved piece of art you own.

Stop for a few minutes and write down why it is a favorite. How long have you owned it? Who is the artist? Was it an impulse buy from a local artist or a splurge for which you carefully budgeted?

Take a photo of a favorite meal.

What made it special? Was it the special ingredients? The cook who made it just perfect?

IMG_3364

Grandma’s Quilt © 2013 Bo Mackison

Take a photo of your bed made up with your favorite sheets, blankets, quilts.

What makes your bed special? Do you sleep under quilts hand sewn by your great-aunt? Are your pillow cases scented with lavender? Do you love the feel of silk sheets or down comforters?

Take a photograph of the TV screen (and you) while watching your favorite show.

(Substitute a movie, a sporting event, or a concert if you prefer.)

If possible, have someone take a photo of you watching your favorite show. Why do you like this particular television show?How do like to watch TV? With your feet propped up, totally relaxed? In your pajamas, at the end of the day? With a book in your hand or a computer on your lap?

What other favorites might you photograph?

A collection? A favorite flower in your garden? A favorite perfume? Favorite outdoor spaces?

This is the important part of the project – print those photos.

Don’t just store your photos on your camera or cell phone or leave them in a file on your computer. Print them. Get these photos printed. Then you can study these photos. Hold them in your hands. They will be available for they are inspiration or interpretation. They are memoir-photographs!

Take a few minutes to label them with place and time. Jot down a few words about what is happening in the photographs, or why you enjoy drink apple fizzy, or how you feel when you look at your favorite piece of art or listen to your favorite music.

Put the photographs and their annotations in your memoir container. They will be there, ready and waiting, when you are inspired to write. Writing prompts just for you. When you are ready, elements in the photos will tickle your memory and provide rich details for your writing.

Do you have a photograph in your stash that might inspire you to write that proverbial one thousand words, memories that might have been forgotten and not recorded without the inspiration from a “memoir-photo”.

Writing Your Life Story Part 8: Memoir and Photography (Option #1)

Seattle Latte

Coffee © 2009 Bo Mackison

Mention “writing your memoir” and most people think about recording memories, recalling events and names in the past, even researching distant history.

Yet, sometimes capturing the present is as important as recalling the past.

When you document the present, you can compare today’s stories with the past. This project combines photography and writing, and focuses on the present moment.

GETTING READY:

Any camera will work. A point and shoot camera or a cell phone camera is fine. You need only shoot a couple dozen shots so if you don’t own a camera, an inexpensive disposable camera from a dollar store works fine.

Keep in mind, for this project, much of the value is in printing some of your photographs. While the internet is a convenient place to store large numbers of photographs, it does not compare to getting prints of your photos to study and compare.

So grab a camera and give this project a try. You’ll enjoy both the process and the results.

OPTION #1: THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Pick a day when you have several items on your to-do list, but you are not over-extended. You want to be busy enough to document the variety in your day, but not so busy that pausing for photographs zings your stress meter.

If you like to follow a schedule, set your phone or watch alarm for every hour or two, and take a photograph of whatever you are doing or where ever you are when the alarm sounds. If you’d rather shoot when you feel inspired, give that a try.

Here are a few examples: at nine o’clock in the morning, you are working on a sewing project. You have material and patterns and sketches spread over your workspace. Take a photo.

At eleven o’clock, you are running errands. The munchies strike and you stop at Pop’s Vegan Drive-Thru for a garden burger and an apple fizzy. Take a shot of the Drive-Thru sign or the menu. Take another photo of your lunch.

Yellow Water Lilies

Yellow Water Lilies © 2010 Bo Mackison

In the afternoon, you pick up the kids up from baseball practice. Take a photo of the jumble of kids sprawled on the ground after that last inning. Or take a photo of your kid kicking his shoe in the dirt or doing somersaults in the grassy field while the ball game is in progress.

In the evening, take a photograph while on an after-dinner walk around the neighborhood or on a stroll through your favorite park. Capture details that you might not otherwise remember. An empty playground. Water lilies on the pond. A colorful ad in a storefront.

Add a snapshot of the headlines from the front page of the local newspaper or magazine you are reading to help pinpoint not only the date, but what is happening in the world or your community.

The next post offers another photography project. I’ll also give suggestions on how to organize these collections of daily photographs.

 

 

Writing Your Life Story Part 7: Jump Start Your Memoir

Benches in a Formal Garden © 2010 Bo Mackison

Action does not always require a large commitment.

It doesn’t need a complicated plan or a large chunk of your time. Many things, including adding daily writing to your day, can be done in small steps. Carve fifteen minutes out of your morning to write a hundred words and in a month you will have accumulated 3,000 words.

A few minutes of daily writing turns a few dozen sentences into a wealth of memories and information.

Here are three writing actions that can be done in 15 minutes segments of time. If the prompts lead you on a path you decide not to follow, then you have only invested a few minutes. Stop. Try a different prompt or technique. Not every prompt works for every writer. But if you strike a rich writing vein, you can always write longer than planned.

The words will add up quickly, and you will have stories, free-flowing thoughts, ideas, glimpses of the past, snippets of descriptions — all inspiration to add to your life story project.

Pick an action and start writing today.

Action #1. Write for 15 minutes describing what you and your immediate family were doing when you heard about or experienced a newsworthy event. Pick one that affected a large number of people in the world. Perhaps you watched a global event on television, like the tearing down of the Berlin Wall or when man first walked on the moon.

Action #2. Write about an event that affected only a few people on a personal level. Perhaps it was the birth of a long-awaited baby, a move to a new home, or the loss of a job. Or write about an event that happened in your hometown or the death of a person in your community that affected you deeply.

Action #3. Another technique for zeroing in on a specific event, and then expanding on its effect, is to do short interviews – only one to three questions in length – with several people who experienced the same event. Asking people of different ages and stages in life can highlight the similarities and differences that an event had not only you, but on other people in your life. This exercise adds meaning and depth when viewed from several perspectives.

An example: putting Action #3 into action.

I choose a difficult topic for Action # 3. I asked family members questions about 9/11, the World Trade Center tragedy in New York City that occurred over a decade ago. I asked them to recall their memories of that day. I purposely chose family members from three generations.

When the event happened in 2001, the family members I interviewed were: a 76-year-old woman living in a small town in the Midwest; a 46-year-old businessman who was working in a downtown Chicago skyscraper when the event happened; a 20-year-old college junior studying at the University of Michigan; and a 13-year-old living at home and in middle school.

I asked two questions.

First, a personal question: “What were you doing when you first heard about the 9/11 tragedy?”

Second, a perspective question: “How did you think this event would affect you, your family, and/or your country?”

Here are a few excerpts from the interviews:

“…didn’t even know about it til the evening news. I’d been in the garden…never in my life we ever have such an enemy on American soil…I thought maybe soldiers would be coming, maybe we’d have a war…”

“…was working on the 45th floor of the Sears Tower, one of Chicago’s skyscrapers…we had to evacuate. Walk down the stairs, take nothing with us except our briefcases. Stopped traffic jammed the streets and people crowded the sidewalks. When I reached the train station, the trains weren’t running…I was in a park-and-drive 40 miles from the station…I was 150 miles away from my home and family…desperate to get home. I figured it would be better once we were all together.”

“I was getting ready to go to class and I saw a bunch of kids crowded around the TV in our lounge. I stopped to see what they were looking at. While I watched the TV, I saw the second plane…I didn’t understand. Then I was in shock. We all were. None of us went to class after that…we watched the TV all day and all night.”

“I remember I was in eighth grade. My teachers kept whispering in the hallways all day and kept saying “don’t worry.” Except we didn’t know what we weren’t supposed to worry about, so we worried a lot…parents started coming and taking  kids out of school… during my last class of the day, my history teacher brought a TV into class and finally told us. We talked about what happened… I didn’t get it. I didn’t have a clue until I went home and talked to my Mom. But I still didn’t really understand.”

With the experiences of others added to my interpretation of the day’s events, it presents a vivid picture of that time in history from different perspectives. It adds depth to the story and helps ground the events in real time.

Try one or more of the above prompts. Set your timer and start writing. Or  do an impromptu interview.

Next: Part 8, Memoir and Photography