Post #177 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompts and Life Prompts – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
5 Great Ways to Flex Your Memoir Muscle
By Pamela Jane Bell
Regular guest blogger, children’s book author and coach. Pamela is currently finishing her memoir. Pamela’s first book for adults, Pride and Prejudice and Kitties: A Cat-Lover’s Romp through Jane Austen’s Classic
[Note from Women’s Memoirs: Like cats? Love Jane Austen? Then we highly recommend this book to you. Want to learn more about it? At the bottom of this blog post, we’ve put Pamela’s new book trailer.]
cogito ergo sum: “I think, therefore I am” – René Descartes.
To me, flexing your memoir muscle means cultivating a state of mind in which you are aware of being aware. This requires living an examined life – not in retrospect but in the present, even as at it unfolds. The deeper and more earnestly you engage in investigating reality, past and present, the more vividly you will be able to recreate a particular reality for your reader.
Following are 5 tips for flexing your memoir muscle – a workout I need everyday!
1. Use music to take yourself back to “here and now” of the past.
Music touches hidden chords of memory and reanimates long-forgotten experiences and emotions. Fortunately, the internet gives us the ability to find a piece of music or a song in an instant. This is a great gift for memoir writers. I arrange my “memoir music” into folders labeled for different chapters of my life. When I listen to Tracy Nelson’s poignant “Sad Situation” or Bob Dylan’s lilting “To Be Alone With You,” I’m transported back to 1970. Once again I’m painting the walls of an old farmhouse while approaching a fateful turning point in my life. The music unlocks and engages all the senses from that time. I can even smell the wet paint.
2. Talk to people from your past
We all remember different things, and we all remember the same things differently. That’s why your memoir is yours! I rarely make use of others’ memories in my memoir; most of the time their stories are extraneous to mine. Yet talking to someone from the past can open your mind and generate new insights.
For years, I’ve been returning to the Shawangunk Mountains in upstate New York, to write and think about the past. But it wasn’t until I unexpectedly met up with an old friend there that I found the ending to my memoir. His version of a dramatic event that touched us both allowed me to see my story in a richer perspective. It was just the touch I needed to exit gracefully from my narrative.
3. Cultivate Lucid Dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming. (Dr. Stephen Laberge from The Lucidity Institute at Stanford University has established that lucid dreaming occurs in a true REM state, not one where you are half-awake or simply imagining that you are dreaming.) Tibetan monks have been using lucid dreaming techniques for centuries to “wake up” and explore the illusory nature of reality.
Part of training yourself to have lucid dreams is performing “state tests” throughout the day to see if you are dreaming. For example, you might jump up in the air to see if you can fly. If you’re dreaming, you probably will be able to float at the very least. (Don’t go jumping off any rooftops, though, until you’re positive you’re dreaming!) The point of this exercise is to teach you to test your state during the night, when you truly are dreaming, so that you can enter a lucid state. But even if you never have a lucid dream, the daytime exercises, such as state tests, encourage the habit of examining reality instead of rushing unconsciously through the day. And if you do have a lucid dream, the heightened awareness it brings will spill over into your waking and writing life.
See my for more about lucid dreaming and memoir.
4. Remember to remember
I keep a little rock by my computer that says “remember.” It’s not “remember” as in remember to take out the garbage or remember to call the dentist. It’s remember as in, reflect, contemplate, make time to step back and think about the present as it speeds into the past. This can be a formal meditation, or just a moment in time when you stop and give yourself mental space, a cushion of silence around you to luxuriate in. Remember to remember that you are you, and that you are here, alive and living in the world.
"Bedroom Space - Mental Place" by Ted Ramsay
5. Notice something different in your environment every day
This is an exercise I invented and really enjoy doing. I look out my window, or around my writing room, and make a mental note of something I’ve never noticed before. Yesterday my eye lit upon a green canoe turned upside down behind my neighbor’s woodshed. I’m sure I gazed at that canoe unthinkingly dozens of times before. But yesterday I really looked at it. I committed its color and peculiarities to memory. Every day, I review the list of things I’ve become aware of, and add something new. This sharpens my powers of observation, and makes me feel that I am cherishing my time here and appreciating the things around me, especially the ordinary, everyday things.
Long ago, a speaker at a writer’s conference gave me some good advice. “Walk slowly, walk quietly, look deep,” she said. Sadly, that sounds almost dated now. These days we’re more like to race, race noisily, and not look down.
Please drop us a comment and tell us your strategies for flexing your memoir muscle. We’d love to hear from you!
Below is the trailer for Pamela Jane’s new book: Pride and Prejudice and Kitties: A Cat-Lover’s Romp through Jane Austen’s Classic
