Sometimes stories float around in a writer’s mind a long time before they come to any real form. I have a character that keeps coming to mind as I am trying to fall asleep. She is a strong woman with three lives. She passes in and out of each of the three lives every year on August first. She actually ages and is reborn into a new life and three personalities every 80 years or so. She refers to herself as a “Reborn.” Remembering each life that she lives is one of her demons. She is reborn so many times that eventually she begins running into the family members and acquaintances over and over. She begins to understand that she is not the only reborn and develops a theory of who in her lives has the same condition. If she admits her condition to another, will they put her in a mental hospital or will she find another reborn? Each lifetime she lives, she lives one less year in the next life. Eventually, she will run out of lives and then what? What if you had to relive going through adolescence, break-ups, paper-cuts, childbirth, weddings, funerals, and the roller coaster of living over, and over, and over. What would you question about life, about God, about existence? Let me know if this sounds like a decent story to develop or pursue. Should I continue to roll it around in my mind or put pen to paper?
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Writing Memoirs
You Don’t Have to Be Old to Write a Memoir
Ann Frank wrote in her journal daily and her story has been told through a book and movie. Other authors who write do so to share their misery, their fame, their politics, or their ideas of how to do or not do what they did in life. Writing down these moments of an individual’s life offers a public witness to their existence in the world. As people age, we often forget that our grandparents lived life much as we did. They had worries, bills, kids, friends, and jobs. They had hardship and sadness, and said things they regretted. All the people that ever existed lived with the same emotions we have today. The times were different, challenges different, but the emotions they had as friends, lovers, parents, and children were much the same as ours.
When we die and our children’s children take over this world, will we be remembered? Will a funny story we always told at Christmas be repeated or forgotten because we are long gone? Writing your story, writing any part of the life that you experienced, if only the memory of one special event, will become a treasure someday to a family member.
No memoir is a waste of time. Short or long, it leaves behind a trail to who we were in our family. It speaks from the past in a distinct voice that those who knew us heard clearly. It whispers to our grandchildren that they are because we were first.
It sounds a little desperate to grasp at witnesses to our being through writing. But that is what we do as writers. We are leaving bread trails with each word dropped so that someone, anyone will follow. Someone will note that we made the effort, that we were here. So write moments, write memories, and be proud of being at whatever age you are.
Writing Memoirs Workshop on February 15th at 9 am – Traylor Writing Services Center, 3025 25th Street, Columbus, In. Call 812-348-2590 to register now. Also Friday, March 1st Memoirs class available.
Filed under On Writing
Where?
Where do flies go in winter?
Do they have a fly beach where they all go as a winter playground. Is there a miniature smorgasbord of trashcan delicacy that they gather around in a human all-you-can-eat fashion?
Where do the worms go in the winter?
Do they have a deep center of the earth terrarium that looks like Verne’s journey? Imagine the worms in the millions there and why had Verne’s characters not followed them as they migrated back to the top of the earth’s surface?
Where do we go in the winter?
Much like our lessor sized animal inhabitants, some hibernate and only leave dwellings to go from one to another. We don’t hunt, we don’t wander, and we don’t forage. We run from behind walls to another set for protection and hibernation. We eat up our stored foods and await the warm weather to return.
So are we so different from the worm or the fly?Not really.
We just take up more space and when we do meet, discuss the misery we share of the cold.
Filed under Prose, Uncategorized
Polished Silver
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”
This excerpt from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien is what kept entering my head as I cleaned an old blackened silver tray. As I rubbed the tarnish and saw small dots where silver plating was gone, I thought about the distressed metal underneath the silver plating. The tray had a history before I bought it at a garage sale. How many wonderful party snacks had been placed on this tray for guests, or had it been in a musty garage for many years? Did it find first life in the hands of a bride from a loving aunt? Had this tray been found by another woman at a sale ten years before and used once for a special Friday night card party? As I imagined its many misuses, I saw my reflection appearing in the center of the tray. Half polished silver framed by oxidation, reflected eyes that had wandered far. Tolkien’s words lay lightly on the face in the tray and it shines with new purpose.
Filed under Prose
sherrystruthtofiction 