Mining Your Memories: Brainstorming Techniques to Unlock the Writer’s Past
Your memories include more material than you could use in a lifetime of writing. In fact, if you have a normal, healthy brain, you have so many memories that it can be hard to know where to start when writing about your personal experiences.
Start by brainstorming. One of the best ways to brainstorm is to write “I remember…” at the top of your paper or screen. Next, give yourself 8–10 minutes to list as many highlights from your past as you can recall. Highlights are usually memories that trigger strong emotion for you–joy, terror, humiliation, grief. To give yourself a sense of direction, you might start listing highlights from your earliest years and then move forward, or you might do the reverse–start with this year and move backward. In any case, to do a brainstorming exercise properly, you are not allowed to edit the ideas that pop into your mind, nor are you allowed to cross anything off your list once it finds its way into print. Just let it flow. Don’t let your fingers stop moving. If you have to pause for more than 10 seconds, start writing, “What next?” until an idea pops into your mind. (This lets your fingers know that they aren’t getting out of work just because you’ve hit a dead end, and it keeps the words flowing.) Don’t feel that you have to explain the ideas you list. Just a short note like, “horse that babysat,” or “dead barn dog” will do. (Sorry. Those are two of my earliest memories.) At the end of 8 minutes, you should have at least 50 ideas. If you have a hundred, consider yourself an accomplished brainstormer. If you have only a couple dozen, you are being way too picky about your list. Just let the ideas flow….don’t judge.
After you have your list, take a moment to read back through what you’ve remembered. Place a mark next to the ideas that elicit a strong emotional response. If you are sitting in my class right now, Tweet our group a memory you are willing to share, and we’ll work our way through the Twitter feed, talking about these. As you listen to your classmates explain their memories, you will remember more from your own past. Feel free to jot down more ideas as you listen.
Next, pick one memory that you think might be fun to write more about. Our next step will be to create a sensory list focused on this memory. Start first by listing everything you remember SMELLING that was associated with this memory. Next, list everything your remember HEARING, including things you remember that people said. (Don’t worry if you lack a photographic memory that can replay exact words.) Next, list all the visual details you associate with this memory. Think especially of details about the people and the setting. TOUCH and TASTE may not be applicable to your memory, but if they are, write down details about those things as well.
Finally, set aside ten minutes to free-write. Free writing is a lot like brainstorming, but rather than making a list, you will write in paragraph form about your experience. You don’t have to spell correctly or make clear sense; you just have to let the story spill out of you without any effort to edit or withhold what you might normally think of as weak writing. Do not let your fingers stop moving. Just get the words on paper. In ten minutes, you should be able to fill at LEAST two sides of a page. Three is even better.
When you have completed your free write, go back over what you have written and highlight the parts you like best. Now you’re free to begin doing a little editing, if you feel inclined. If not, just add your lists and your first draft material to the raw work section of your class binder. Look appreciatively at how many pages you wrote in a short time!
For more inspiration about the creative use of lists in writing, check out this article: http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/10/18/ray-bradbury-on-lists/
