~ Benjamin Alire Sáenz, from “To the Desert” in Dark and Perfect Angels
Renewal – A Desert Meditation
Writing Your Life Story Part 7: Jump Start Your Memoir
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.
Writing Your Life Story Part 6: Collect Memories in Letters
Write letters for the Memoir Project?
Yes. It’s a quick project with many benefits.
My mother’s only cousin turns 90 in a few days. (Happy Birthday, Cousin Pauline!) I have a card ready to pop in the mail, but I didn’t want to send wishes for her big day without adding a personal note.
It would have been easier for me to scribble a few words and sign a big “I love you!” at the bottom of the card, but while I was trying to come up with the right few words, I realized that this birthday event would be a perfect time to do some life story writing “on the fly.”
That’s mostly how I write my life story – in little projects that add up over time.
How easy would it be to pen a special memory to a special person when it is time to send a special card? Sure, it adds extra minutes to the card choosing and address writing basics, but a card with a handwritten note is so much more meaningful, especially if it recounts a memorable time for the recipient.
I chose a photo-art card that featured a rose on the cover, remembering that Pauline had a very small yard, but she always had rose bushes flanking her home’s front door. Then I brainstormed to recall a few memories from weekend visits with Pauline and her husband. In less than a half hour I had come up with a few details I thought Pauline would enjoy reading.
Here is an excerpt from the letter I eventually wrote:
I always loved visiting your home in the big city. There were always special trips to the mall. I still remember how fascinated I was that the largest department store in your mall had a roof shaped like a two-story-tall woman’s hat — it even had a pink bow and tiny windows.
But one weekend when we visited, I was too distracted to enjoy myself.
Our visit came a few weeks before the end of the school semester. I was struggling with my math assignments and worried about the upcoming comprehensive exam. Math was never much to my liking, and I talked myself into an inability to memorize the multiplication and division tables.
To make matters even worse, you were a highly respected math teacher at the junior high school where you taught and the math department head and you had recently completed the coursework for your masters’ degree in mathematics. I was impressed at your math accomplishments, but also terrified that you would quiz me on my math facts and I would be embarrassed, not knowing the right answers.
But you surprised me. When you asked how I was doing in school, I blurted out, “I love school…all but math. I hate math!”
I remember you looked at me, first with surprise, and then you broke into prolonged laughter. Finally you wiped a few tears from your eyes and called me over to your overstuffed chair. You pulled me onto your lap, and whispered, “Why don’t you tell me what part of math you hate the very most?”
Pauline, I remember you gave me a big hug after I told you I was “no good at multiplying.”
You nodded your head, and you said, “There are things that you can do very well and things you can’t. And that is OK. If math is one of those not so good things, maybe I can teach you a few tricks to make it easier.”
You called it “math magic” and you showed me how to maneuver the numbers in my head while I was multiplying. If I was trying to figure out the answer to 8 times 6, and I didn’t know the 6 tables very well, but I did know the 5 tables, you told me how to multiply 8 times 5 (easy!) and just add another 8 for the right total.
Presto! That math trick, and several others, helped me conquer some of my math fear and I went home with a better attitude about math facts.
But, Pauline, this is really what you taught me that weekend – that it is OK if you are good at some things, and not so good at others. Thank you, not just for the math lesson, for the lesson about life.
I mailed the letter, but first I made a copy to put in my memoir container.
I also checked my calendar for the remainder of the year and picked a special event — birthday, anniversary, graduation — for each month.
I put a reminder on my calendar to send a special occasion card with a “memoir letter.”
When I break my life writing into tiny steps and make them serve a special purpose, such as writing a quick story in a card, it is easy for snippets of memories to get captured on paper.
Do you have any special occasions that are coming up in the next month or two? Why not put a note on your calendar to add a story to your card? You’ll document a bit more of your life story, and the recipient will get a special gift, too.
Praise the Day – A Poem
Praise the day, first light
illuminates tree tops,
then a glow glides through the leaves,
flickers upon the trunk, touches the earth.
Praise the bird chatter.
Cacophony. Praise that word,
such a wild word, a burst of joy.
Praise the velvet acacias, yellow bloom,
yellow fuzz masks the pavement
encircling its shaggy trunk. Bees and stardust.
The tree alive with buzz and bee swarm.
Praise the mountain, a silhouette.
Its face awakens, creased in purple and gray,
shadow and light.
Praise the tea kettle, the tea, the water.
My cup with tea leaves clustered in the depths,
dispersed into shapes and symbols – a butterfly,
a beetle, a crescent moon.
Praise the ease, the work, the solitude.
Sip the tea and praise.
The tree a storyteller; the bees her audience.
The tea a refreshment; the tea leaf a message.
Writing Your Life Story Part 5: Finding the Perfect Container
Awareness is not the same as thought. It lies beyond thinking, although it makes no use of thinking, honoring it’s value and it’s power. Awareness is more like a vessel which can hold and contain our thinking, helping us to see and know our thought as thought rather than getting caught up in them as reality. ~~ Jon Kabit-Zinn
The Memoir Project invites you to take a writing break. Go on a treasure hunt instead.
This is a treasure hunt to find the perfect vessel to “hold and contain your thinking,” those bits of memoir writing and projects you are collecting as the months pass by. (Although if your schedule permits, you could both write a story or two and go searching for that special container.)
Your container can be as plain or fancy as you wish, as decorative or functional as suits your own temperament. Of course, you may already own a special container and simply need to re-purpose it. Or a trip to the local shops may inspire you to examine boxes, baskets, and bags.
Antique Leather Bag © 2010 Bo Mackison
I scoured the antique shops for a sewing basket to hold my growing stash of memoir projects.
My grandmother, a seamstress by profession, had a varnished wicker sewing basket, maybe fourteen inches in diameter, with a flat wicker lid. The top was decorated with a tassel of threads and buttons. I record many memories of my early years when I lived with my grandparents, and it would be meaningful to find a similar basket for my memoir storage.
What kind of container is right for your memoir collection?
A cookie tin for the baker in the family? A pink vintage suitcase for the traveler or wanna be traveler? A picnic basket for the outdoors enthusiast?
Pink Vintage Luggage © 2010 Bo Mackison
Maybe an old-fashioned doll trunk to hold a trunkful of childhood memories? A bamboo box for the naturalist? A quilted bag to hold an accumulation of old letters and memorabilia? Or one of these great hat boxes to hold reminders of the “good ol’ days?”
Marshall Field Hat Box © 2010 Bo Mackison
What container will you choose for your memoir stash?
When you find the perfect container to contain your collection of writings and other memoir media, why not take thirty minutes to write about your choice and how it relates to the life story you are recording.
Then gather your memoir projects and put them all in their new home.




