You’re
probably reading this because you have—or hope you have—a story that
needs or wants telling. Let me assure
you,
you do. It might be memoir or fiction. Both forms
evolve from your life experience--whether remembered or invented.
Maybe you want to preserve precious
moments of your unique past. Or maybe they form
personal nuggets for a short story you’re motivated to recapture in
some lasting form.
But where to begin? You
can begin almost anywhere. Wherever your memory or creative
imagination takes you. Either way, you'll need to fashion
and arrange these nuggets in some sequential form. Whether you
recall or invent, the secret of making these moments come alive is to
put yourself squarely inside them--to dramatize them in details, feelings, places, people. I call this process
"Stand in the Moment."
Stand in the Moment…It’s
not hard to do.
You’ve seen it in
movies: a frozen snapshot comes to life. Like a
game
of “Simon Says,” characters start moving through the scene;
kids
run, dogs bark, cars beetle by, clouds race across a ball field, wind
carries the smell of sizzling hot dogs. That’s how you begin any
narrative--fiction or memoir: scene, character, movement,
details. Try it. From now on, we’ll
call
it: SIM
Enter the Senses....
In fact, since birth, we have lived our lives in no other way but
moment by moment, breath by breath, bathed by experiences that we take
in through our five senses—what we see, hear, smell, taste, what we
touch and what touches us. Brain scientists tell us that’s
literally how memory is formed as well as how it’s stored for later
recall. That's what fiction writers call on to construct a
story. It's your total life experience--the entire sensory
resource pool you call on whether you write from memory or imagination.
Who's Speaking Here?
Steve Oberbeck has led memoir and story writing seminars for a decade. He was
an arts critic
and cultural writer for Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, National Review and other publications. His work
has appeared in numerous periodicals in the U.S. and abroad.
He
also wrote for senior executives and taught communications
skills
at leading corporations in the U.S., Europe or Asia for 20 years. He
attended Brown University, was awarded a fellowship to the Iowa Writers
Workshop
and has published memoir,
poems, more poems, stories and arts criticism.
Sensory perceptions
are the raw materials of our recall and imagination, the actual
ingredients of how we come to feel and think about ourselves and
others. And these perceptions leave tracks--sensory “trails”
that
lead us back to the moments that mattered in our lives. Step
by
step, you’ll retrace your signature trails back to this rich resource
pool of your total life experience--facts, feelings, memories,
imagination.
Since sme
ll is the strongest of our five senses, it almost always lures
us back to a place worth exploring. The heavenly aroma of
baked
bread always takes me back to freezing winter mornings when I trudged
past Heckler’s Bakery in North St. Louis on my way to grammar school
during World War II.
For instance, close your eyes again and try to summon up a smell, an aroma
from your childhood. It doesn’t
matter if
it’s “positive” or “negative,” sweet or sour. What matters is
how
it comes back and where it comes from. SIM!
It
could be as
specific as baby food, bubble gum or the ozone freshness after a summer
rain. It could be insect
repellant (along with buzzing bugs,
mosquito bites, woods, camp) or baking cookies, rotting leaves or
castor oil. What matters is what scent comes back naturally,
where your "trail" takes you. Whether you turn these perceptions
into memoir or fiction is up to you. Focus on that sense, then
that
moment. SIM!
Or try being more specific: can you remember your favorite
daydream or worst nightmare as a kid? A
superstition? A
recurring fear? Or, what was the earliest sharp awareness of
“winning”—or “losing”—you can recall? A wish coming true; a
hope
dashed.
Is there is childhood feeling you lost as you got older (girls are
icky, camp stinks, dogs are the best, parents suck)? Or, an
adult
feeling you still have that traces back to your childhood (the sun will
come out tomorrow, nobody loves me, I can depend on loving
people)? Or, an episode that marked the end of childhood
innocence (finding out Santa Claus, the Easter bunny aren’t real,
parents are splitting up), the beginning of adolescence (your first
crush) or shouldering adult responsibilities (marriage,
children). Do they still affect your behavior? Your
emotions? Your outlook on life?
Stand in the Moment:
That’s how you start to compile the compost of a writer's resource
pool—recollecting moments in time, like browsing snapshots in a
“photo album” with the all-important human details and feelings
highlighted. Later, you’ll learn how to string the moments
together for maximum drama and meaning. Isn't that what
Dostoievsky, Proust or Scott Fitzgerald did?
That’s why I call this process “Stand
in the Moment." It's what all writers do. It's about "being there," being inside the action--making drama with scenes, people, feelings, actions, details.
What about the “writing”
part? At first, you don’t need to
worry
about “writing” at all. Whatever your experience, you’ll find
you
already have all the skills you need—and others you’ll develop—to
succeed. Most important, you already know how to tell your
story
in your own voice with your own words—to “talk” it out on
paper.
If you describe your moments step-by-step, the right words will suggest
themselves. What’s more authentic than your own
voice? You
work with who you are, not what you may think you need to become.
Let the Guide Get You Started
To help you
capture and make key moments
live again on paper, a 40-page
workshop
Personal
Guide
(click on the link) gets you started and shows you how. This guide lays out workshop-tested tools, “modules” I’ve developed
over years of teaching hundreds of aspiring memoir
or fiction writers to get started connecting to their
personal resource pool. It's
meant to inspire you or
trigger
ideas. Developed first for memoir writers, it's in nine sections; browse around and remember the
old
guru's
admonition: "Eat the elephant one bite at a time..."
The guide’s easy-to-follow steps get you started and keep you
going. I’ve seen them work for people of all kinds and ages
for
years. They show you how to unlock your treasure trove of
memories, recollect, re-connect and write down the basic ingredients of
your personal story or one you "invent," using the information of your five senses to
describe and decode the perceptions, thoughts or experiences that have made you who you
are.
They work their magic no matter what your age or writing
skills.
It’s like rediscovering cherished toys we put away long ago and
forgot--or opening long-shut doors. For fiction writers, it's like a refresher course in the inventive art.
The trick is focus on particular moments and what’s really happening—to become aware, conscious. To absorb the
information there, the history, sights, sounds, physical and sensory
details.
You can practice with any
of your other senses. Just go
where
they take you. Fourth of July fireworks, for instance, are
always
door-openers for me: a childhood Trifecta of sight, sound and smell
(and touch, if the sparklers’ bits fell on bare arms). Another
childhood “trigger” for me is the sharp, malt smell of beer
(in
long-neck, clinking brown glass bottles back then) and the radio
crackle of Sunday baseball broadcasts, both favorites of my gruff but
kindly uncle Walter. Whether it’s a heart-stopping screech of
brakes, the aroma of frying bacon, a loon’s cry on the moonlit lake or
lightning bugs winking in a summer night, you’ll find yourself in a
likely moment on which to focus your attention. After all, Gatsby's "green light" didn't come out of nowhere.
Focus on a Gift:
Going back to childhood is often the best exercise to brush up on perceiving details.
Close your eyes again and try remembering a really special gift you got
as a child. Was it a talking, dress-up doll
? A warm
puppy
twitching with excitement? A brand new dirt bike? A
baseball glove creaking with oil-smelling newness? What
sensory
perceptions can you associate with that gift? A
puppy’s
eager tongue on your skin? Wind rushing by as you pedal down
the
bumpy street? The scratchy voice of your new doll-friend?
Or maybe the gift wasn’t an object at all but some loved one’s total
presence—your father teaching you to build a fire, your mother letting
you help bake cookies, a grandfather helping you bait your first
hook. Gifts come in many forms. Make a note of your
special
gift, jot down some details and maybe the feelings around it and keep
it for later.
You’re on your way.
(read
more)
Stand in the Moment…It’s
not hard to do.
You’ve seen it in
movies: a frozen snapshot comes to life. Like a
game
of “Simon Says,” characters start moving through the scene;
kids
run, dogs bark, cars beetle by, clouds race across a ball field, wind
carries the smell of sizzling hot dogs. That’s how you begin any
narrative--fiction or memoir: scene, character, movement,
details. Try it. From now on, we’ll
call
it: SIM
ll is the strongest of our five senses, it almost always lures
us back to a place worth exploring. The heavenly aroma of
baked
bread always takes me back to freezing winter mornings when I trudged
past Heckler’s Bakery in North St. Louis on my way to grammar school
during World War II.