Setting Up Your Memory Bank

You will need two loose-leaf notebooks for writing your story. One is the book you will write in. This one will need lined paper if you are going to write by hand or plain paper if you use a typewriter or a computer. If you write by hand, write only on every second or third line so you will be able to add words and thoughts, make corrections, and more. If you type, always double space for the same reason.

The other notebook, which should definitely have lined paper, is your memory bank, into which you will deposit facts about your past as they come to mind — just a few words to keep the thought from getting away is all you need to put down. You will find that these facts will gather "interest" just like a savings account. As you read them over again and again and begin to write your story, one memory will spark another and multiply itself many times. Make a note of each of these new memories and soon you will have a wealth of material from which to write your story.

As you begin to work, you will use the first fifty-one pages of your memory bank notebook, one for each assignment. You may use more later but this will get you started. In the upper right-hand corner of each page, using a red pencil, copy from your book the name of each assignment (see Assignments, p. 243), one assignment to a page. For example, your first page will be (1–Birth), your second (2–Toys), and so on. Make a page for each assignment in the book right in the beginning — don't wait until you come to each assignment in the book — because if the pages are all ready you will be more likely to jot down and save ideas as they come to you.

Ground Rules

In her beautiful and simply written autobiography, Grandma Moses: My Life's Story, Anna Mary Moses tells us exactly how she wrote the story of her life. She says, "I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them."

One could scarcely find a better formula for writing one's life story, and I hope you will resolve to begin to write about your life in small sketches, a little today, a little tomorrow, as you remember all of the things from your childhood and through the years, both the good things and the unpleasant things. This book is designed to help you do exactly that.

Here are a few ground rules that I would like for you to apply as you work on this exciting project:

1. Don't worry about how it sounds. Don't work for style. Just write whatever comes into your head as if you were writing a letter to your closest friend. Many beginning students worry so much about achieving a certain style in their writing that they can't get beyond the first paragraph. Don't waste a minute in this manner. There will be plenty of time later if you want to revise. (There is a chapter on revision later in the book.) Even many professional writers write their first drafts without any thought as to how their work sounds. They just want to get their story down on paper.

2. Be yourself. Write the way you talk. Don't be embarrassed if you know that your grammar is faulty. This is your story and it should sound like you. The way you have talked all of your life is the way you should write and the way that will best reflect you. One of the most delightful autobiographies I have ever read is Anything Can Happen by George Papashvily, an immigrant from Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union. It is written in badly garbled English, but that is part of its charm. Here is an example of Papashvily's writing in which he tells about being apprenticed to a swordmaker when he was 10 years old:

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Work 14 hours in every day and the master's wife had a pleasure to wash, always to wash. In suds and out of, rubbing and scrubbing, even the walls and window and street before the door knew her brush and mop. And for all this I had the duty in my spare time to carry buckets of water from the well. Coupla days in the house and a person could enjoy to be dirty rest of his life.

* * *

In spite of the language handicap (which actually added charm to his book and thus proved to be more an asset than a handicap), Papashvily managed to write a touching and often hilariously funny book.

One of my students, who grew up in the Ozarks, wrote about a "poke" full of potatoes. Several of the members of the class didn't know what a poke was, and she had to explain that it was a sack. She started to substitute "sack" for "poke" when she realized that the other students didn't understand what she was talking about. However, we all insisted that she leave it exactly as she had written it. The word poke added a valuable regional flavor to her story.

3. Be honest. Don't write about things as you wish they had been. Write about them the way they actually were. Take time to think through each incident and be sure you are telling it exactly as it happened, trimming away anything you may have added mentally through the years.

All good writing is an excursion into honesty. We rush madly along through life, often acting or reacting in a given situation without thinking much about how we really feel about it. When we write about our lives, we must take time to analyze our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions. If you have never written before, you will find this sort of analysis a rewarding experience. You will start to write something and a little voice inside you will say, "Just a minute, is that the way it really happened?" or "What did you really think about that — what do you think about that now?" When this voice speaks to you, take time to listen to it and then heed it. You may find you will meet someone with whom you have had little time to get acquainted — yourself! (Of course, as you begin to unlock your closet of memories some skeletons that you just don't want to write about may...