Greetings, writers—
I promise, next week will not be all about the past, either yours or your characters’. But since Wednesday’s memory exercise was behind the paywall, here’s one that isn’t.
Bonus: it involves getting horizontal. And if that leads to a nap, well, you know what they say about sleep and creativity.
In Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, edited by William Zinsser, writer and psychoanalyst Eileen Simpson describes how she called forth memories of her marriage to the poet John Berryman for her memoir, Poets in Their Youth:
I found that the best way to stimulate a memory of the past was to assume the position of a person being psychoanalyzed—to lie on a couch and associate freely, just as a patient does during an analytical hour… So I would lie on the couch and try to think my way back to 1947. I would wait to see what came up on the memory screen, as people do when they’re recalling dreams or other experiences. It was like waiting under water for a certain species of fish to swim by.
If anyone had dropped in to my studio they would have thought I was taking a nap or goofing off. But in fact the effort of trying to recall the past was hard work—every bit as hard as writing. Sometimes an hour would pass and nothing would come, so I’d get up and do something else: have lunch or go for a walk. Then I’d try again.
This weekend, if you can, set aside an hour to lie down and think your way back to a certain time in your life. Much of what Simpson recalled was painful1, but I suggest you pick a happier time; it is the weekend, after all.
Try to see—to receive—one “new” memory, or else gather a clearer picture of one that has heretofore been hazy.
Write it down.
Then, if possible, send it to someone who shared that past moment, or someone who will know what you’re talking about. An actual letter is best, but email’s okay, too. Think of it as a present for you both.
Happy writing—
Emily
P.S. A Berryman excerpt, just for kicks:
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’
Until next time, keep flashing, keep yearning. xx
From Lee Siegel’s NYT review of the book: “Simpson had just graduated from Hunter College when she met Berryman at a New Year’s Day party in 1941. They married the next year and stayed together for 11 more. During that time the couple endured near penury as Berryman went from one low-paying teaching position to another, at one point taking a hapless job trying to sell encyclopedias in impoverished Harlem. It was not until 1956, the year of their divorce, that he broke through to wide acclaim with the publication of his long poem “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet.”
By then, he had destroyed the marriage with infidelities and drinking, keeping Simpson from leaving him with threats of suicide. Earlier in the marriage, he had overwhelmed her orphan’s heart — Simpson lost both her parents when very young and was raised with her sister in a convent — by fainting at moments of stress or conflict.”