Memories

Readers want to feel like they know the person they are reading about. They need to be able to identify with them and put themselves in their shoes.

A good way to make this connection with the reader is to go back to your childhood and write about the earliest experience you can remember.

Here is an early memory I wrote in my prison journal:

May 1, 1963 was a beautiful spring morning. Waiting for the time to go to my school bus, I was excited and feeling pretty grown up. As the oldest of five children, I felt special that I was the only one old enough to go to school. I loved kindergarten and was hoping summer would pass quickly so I could start first grade and go to school all day long like a big girl. Little did I know; this would be the day I grew up and it wasn’t the wonderful thing I anticipated. My hair was cut in a blonde pixie. My mom was so busy with five children that having our hair short made it easier for her. I liked having short hair. I liked that it was fluffy. I wore my favorite brown dress that day. It had pink and orange stripes at the top. Pink and orange were my very favorite colors. Nobody else had a dress with both pink and orange in it. I thought that was so cool.

Readers are drawn to children and it’s easy to hope they are the heroes of their story. So when something bad happens, the reader feels empathy toward the writer.

When you write about your earliest memory, your voice needs to be the voice of that five year old or eight year old. It can’t be a grown woman writing about what happened to that child. The child needs to be telling that story.

But the adult writer can summarize:

I didn't know what was about to happen. A five-year-old girl had lost the daddy she knew, and with him went her whole sense of self. She lost the warm safety of his arms and his smile, and with them went her emotional safety. She lost the Dad who’d told her that her brown eyes were dazzling, that her orange and pink dress was his favorite too. She lost her daddy’s unconditional love because he would no longer be capable of giving it. As the rest of my soul rose to life's challenges, that little girl’s whole soul was left behind, mired in a sea of misconceptions, loss, and need.

Write about the earliest experience you remember.

Tell it from that child’s perspective and then reflect, as an adult how it influenced the rest of your life.