Saying goodbye

using a timer, spend 1 minute per category freewriting all the memories/events from your life that fall into each category below. For example, here’s my 1 minute “When I was little, I used to…” brainstorm:
When I was little, I used to… play in the barn, swing in the yard, dig for worms, sneak into bed with my sister, believe there was gold at the end of the rainbow and I could find it, love gymnastics, break bones, hide kittens in my room, watch R-rated movies, believe I could grow up to be Janet Jackson, make un-winnable bets with my sister…
There are no right or wrong answers, or right or wrong way to do this exercise – just give it a shot!
My first memories are…
In Elementary School, I…
In middle school, I…
High School was…
A journey
The happiest ending
Disappointment
Pets
Best place ever
My heart broke when…
I’m afraid of…
I was brave when…
The Big Win
I regret…
Food
I’m proud of…
My body
This is sacred
When I was little, I used to…
I believe this is true…
Things got weird when…
I thought that…but I was wrong
Saying goodbye
The wide open future
STEP TWO: Read over these possible focuses for Memoirs, identifying anything from your brainstorm that falls into each category
Moments of enlightenment or coming to knowledge: understanding a complex idea for the first time, recognizing what is meant by love or jealously or justice, mastering a complex skill, seeing some truth about yourself or your family that you previously hadn’t seen
Passages from one realm to the next: from innocence to experience, from outsider to insider or vice versa, from child to adult, from novice to expert, from what you once were to what you are now
Confrontation with the unknown: with people or situations that challenged or threatened your identity and values
Moments of crisis or critical choice: moments that tested your mettle or your system of values
Major Choices: effects of those choices on the direction of your life and the persona you project to the world
Problems with people: problems maintaining relationships without compromising your own growth or denying your own needs
Problems accepting limitations and necessities: confronting the loss of dreams, the death of intimates, the failure to live up to ideals, or the difficulty of living with a chronic illness or disability
Contrasts between common wisdom and your own unique knowledge or experience: doing what people said couldn’t be done, failing at something others said was easy, finding value in something rejected by society, finding bad consequences of something that is widely valued
STEP THREE: Look back at your brainstorm and identify a category you’re interested in, then pick one of the events and do a focused brainstorm on that one event. Repeat this process several times, choosing different categories and various events, to generate several possible memoir ideas. The main goal is to identify events that are significant, and changed you in some way.
Again, here’s my “When I was little, I used to…” brainstorm:
When I was little, I used to play in the barn, swing in the yard, dig for worms, sneak into bed with my sister, believe there was gold at the end of the rainbow and I could find it, love gymnastics, break bones, hide kittens in my room, learn Gongyo, watch R-rated movies, believe I could grow up to be Janet Jackson, have trouble sleeping, make un-winnable bets with my sister…
From that list, I chose to explore “digging for worms”. Here is my extended brainstorm:
Nearly every afternoon when I was four, after my sister got home from school, we’d wander down to the pond in the middle of the wheat field behind our house. I’d dig up worms at the waters edge, and try to catch tadpoles. I was afraid of the full-grown frogs, and my sister, three years older, would catch them and toss them in my face or put them on my head and I’d shriek and cry until she apologized. The wheat always seemed taller than me, was always waving and rippling in the wind. That year the farmer didn’t cut the wheat and it got impossibly tall. Maybe he was sick or maybe he died. Weeks later, some other man I didn’t know started harvesting the wheat. On the second day his tractor up-ended in the pond and he drowned. Over the following years, I always wondered if maybe he didn’t know how to swim, but I found out later that it wouldn’t have mattered because he was pinned under the tractor. At the time, I assumed the man didn’t know the pond was there – why else would he have driven his tractor too close to it? I believed only me, my sister, and the real farmer knew the pond was there, which made it special, but also made me feel bad that the man didn’t know, and he drowned. I thought I was somehow responsible – classic childhood misunderstanding – and felt guilty. As I grew older, I came to understand the situation differently as I learned more about farms, farmers, freak accidents, and most importantly the unpredictable and ephemeral nature of the universe and everything in it.
STEP FOUR: Once you’re done with your extended brainstorms, look for possible focuses. For example, there are several different storylines and themes I might develop for a memoir. For example, I might develop:
the idea that for a long time I was sure the man couldn’t swim and that’s why he drowned, which caused me to take swim lessons, become a strong swimmer, and eventually helped me rescue a child who was drowning.
the idea that, like many children, I frequently misunderstood my role in a situation, the effect that had, and how, upon reflection, a different way to seeing the situation eventually emerges – how our personal stories, even though fixed in time, can grow and evolve as we grow and evolve.
the idea that freak accidents are very common on farms. I might go on to discuss how this was the first freak accident I was aware of, and some of the other accidents that followed. I might reflect on how this impacted me, talking about how I decided that dying didn’t seem so bad, but getting hurt seemed torturous. If you died, you were just gone. If you got hurt, you were in horrific pain and you were limited and maybe you never got better. Finally, I might look at whether, as an adult, I still believe this or if my thinking about these ideas have evolved.
There are many possibilities – your job is to focus in on one thread of the story and develop it into a complete memoir.