The last couple of days found me writing about my past, and the results astonished me. I try to live in the moment and to not rehash the past too much, but there is something powerful about looking backwards. It has me intrigued about what kinds of material I could find if I took a moment to revisit my own experiences.
In grad school, my friend Katey Schultz (author of Flashes of War) worked through a series of essays about her adolescence and childhood and her deep examination of her own past always impressed me. While the subjects of her essays were communal and familiar to most readers, her ability to transform the common into the extraordinary gripped her readers and left them considering their own "simple" experiences.
It makes me think there is value in examining one's past. As if on cue, I received a complimentary copy of a memoir writing craft book last night. The book is full of prompts and exercises for examining one's own life in detail.
After all, some of the most common writing advice is "write what you know." It's a good place to start, although Nathan Englander has some interesting things to say about this common, but often misunderstood, piece of advice in his piece for BigThink.com.
How is this kind of writing different from what I do on the blog?
Well, nonfiction essay writing is a more traditional form than the blog post and it means a much more focused and revision-oriented process. Blog posts are off the cuff for me. I don't revise them beyond one final read through once I am done typing. For more formal works like a nonfiction essay, writers need to work through draft after draft to hone the language, structure, and form of the work in much more stringent ways.
It is a powerful form. I suggest it for my readers out there too.
The way I was able to access my personal past over the last couple of days was to examine old photographs and to project myself backwards into those photo-frozen moments. Only by looking at a picture of me giving a speech at my middle school elections did I remember the difficulty I had with an old friend. Only by seeing a picture taken of old friends did I remember my love of dirt track bike riding. The memories are lovely gems to explore personally, but I argue they are also grist for the writing mill, subjects of interest to others out there. While many of us have the material, it takes the writer's focused attention and the patience to participate in self-examination in order to succeed. The past is often more complicated than we realize when we open the door to it.
In an effort to share the wealth with my readers, I'd love to include a quick and informal writing prompt that may get you energized to try your hand at it.
Writing Prompt:
Flip through your old photo albums or printed pictures (try not to use digital photos for this exercise). Be casual about this. Look through the photos until you are struck by one you maybe haven't seen in a while or that elicits a specific emotional response. Stop there. Sit with the picture for a while and examine it. Cast yourself back to the day it was taken. What was going on? Replay the day's events in your head. Think about the days/weeks/months that led up to that moment. Now, write. Try to capture the essence of the day in exacting detail. Don't be afraid to allow yourself a bit of commentary from your older self, but try and keep yourself rooted in the moment as much as possible.
Good luck!
Hah! So cool, Kyle. I'm glad you're having fun with creative nonfiction. I found that the anthology Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Nonfiction edited by Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones was really inspiring. Each piece is just a few pages long and a delight to read...an many pieces seemed to serve as prompts, too. Happy reading...and writing!
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