At some point in your writing career, someone is going to suggest that you mine your own memories for the nuggets of stories. You know, list out everything you can remember.
Color of your first bike.
Favorite lunch when you were seven.
What your childhood home looked like.
It’s the whole write what you know idea. It’s pretty standard advice. It’s pretty good advice. It’s sometimes the hardest advice to follow.
Why is that? I haven’t a clue. We all have interesting lives – no matter if you grew up in a small town of 150 folks or in the middle of NYC. I think the problem is that we do not always think that our lives are worthwhile.
Did you save the world when you were ten? Invent something that has revolutionized society? Found the answer to poverty? Fixed the energy crisis? Made contact with alien cultures? No? Then hmmmm… this is going to be a bit harder than I thought.
No, actually it isn’t.
Writing what you know means putting authentic voice to universal experiences in your own unique way. HUH?
Did you lose someone you loved when you were a kid? What did feel like? How did the people around you react to the death?
Were you the smart kid? The dumb kid? The shy kid? The smelly kid? The popular one? The invisible one? The hungry one? I want to know. I know who I was when I was seven – and I was someone else at twelve – and yet a different person at sixteen. I can relate to your story, I want to relate to your story.
Did your parents have a happy marriage? A less-than-happy one? Were they even married? Did you know your parents? What did they do for a living? Did you have enough money? Food? Too much money? Food? Did your grandma like your father? Hate him? If you tell me, I will connect on an emotional level – I have parents, grandparents, brothers, aunts, uncles, best friends, enemies … I promise you, if you tell me about it, I’m interested.
Did your dad ever, out of the blue, bring home a goat? (Pam????)
Okay – you get the picture. You have stuff. It’s your stuff. It’s interesting to me because it might remind me of myself or teach me something new. I really don’t know.
When I was working on my M.F.A. a new student came into my workshop session. She had written a rather uninspiring picture book — it’s not that it was bad — it’s just — it had no heart. It seemed like any number of picture books, but it had no detail, no voice, nothing that made anyone care. I clearly remember the instructor asking this woman where she had grown up. Turns out, she and her family left her home country due to war, violence, poverty — she grew up moving around to find safe places, sometimes in refugee camps. We all sat there listening to this in awe and wonder. Why hadn’t she used any of this in her book? Not even in the vocabulary. Was it too painful? Was it too close to her heart? Maybe. But what she said was, “I didn’t think anyone would find that interesting. I haven’t seen it in any books.”
Um. Yeah. Like I said – I’m interested in YOUR story. To you, it’s old news. To me it’s amazing. Write your story. You know it by heart.
Now – the trick is – use your emotional memories – they are yours … but unless you want to write memoire, create some fictional folks to live through the emotions you’ve already experienced. You lost your dog? Maybe your MC lost her best friend. You moved to a big city when you were ten? Maybe your MC moves to a farm. You get to use your stories — but you don’t have to stick with what actually happened. Use what works, fix what doesn’t. This is fiction afterall.
Write on, people. Write on.