Shopping for Ideas

 The original Piggly Wiggly Store, Memphis, Tennessee. The first self service grocery store, opened 1916. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

         So far I've never lacked for ideas for this blog and I doubt if I ever would.   As long as I live, new ideas will keep coming and now matter how much I write about my past I can't imagine ever running out of memories to write about.   Even the memories I've already written about could be approached from a number of different angles.    Ideas are not only everywhere, but they are infinite.

          Why am I writing about this topic at this time?   I'm just thinking.  I'm pondering some of the things I might write about in blog posts to come.    And since I'm on the topic, then let me ask you some questions about things that might get you to remembering your past.   Maybe these will be some ideas you can use as well.

• What stores and other businesses can you remember from your youth that are no longer around?
• What was your favorite store to visit when you  were a kid?
• Do you have many eating out experiences that you remember from childhood?
• What things did you typically spend money on when you had it?
• Did you go grocery shopping with your parents?    Were you a help or more of a hindrance?
• Are there any products that you no longer see in stores that you miss?
• Did you have a hobby when you were younger and what types of purchases did you make to sustain your hobby?
• Was there a neighborhood business that was considered a hang-out for you and your peers?
• How has shopping changed in our age as compared to your youth?

       

          I don't expect you to answer all of these questions in the comment section here, though you are certainly welcomed to if you like.   Maybe one question resonates with you that you would like to discuss.  Or maybe you'd like to use one or more of these topics on your own blog.   If you do then please be sure to send me the link so I can read your responses.

         I'll probably be hitting on a few of these ideas in weeks to come.   Memoir can be anything that you remember.    Sometimes memoir evolves from things you don't remember.  That's when the research kicks in.    What's the point of remembering the past?    Maybe you can answer that one too.

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Do You Keep an Idea File?

Idea file is in center of photo.  Larger file in corner was
acquired later and is used for personal and business
records.

          Years ago when I was in high school and still living at home with my parents, one of the items on my gift wish list was a file cabinet.   It was on the birthday of either my junior or senior year when my mother got me the file cabinet that I had specifically picked out from the Sears catalog.  The cabinet consisted of two standard size file drawers on one side and a compartment with shelves and a safe on the other side.  This cabinet remained in my parents house for the next twenty years.

          Since childhood I had always had an interest in organizational fixtures in which to keep my belongings.   Usually I resorted to cardboard boxes.  When I began collecting stamps I acquired an index card size two drawer file and some metal storage boxes.  However, my storage capacity for papers and such was sadly lacking.  The official file cabinet made a world of difference for certain aspects of my ability to organize things that were mine.

          In the cabinet I kept mostly things that pertained to my writing and my personal memorabilia.  One drawer held file folders of newspaper clippings and papers that served as story ideas and prompts and other articles that pertained to my life or people I knew.  The other drawer was mainly for various publications, photos, personal documents, and other data that was important to me.  After I moved out of my parents house, the file cabinet was moved to their basement laundry room where it remained for the period of over a decade when I was on the road in the entertainment business.

         Eventually after I returned to Tennessee to settle down to a regular life, I retrieved the file cabinet contents from my parents basement and transferred them to a new file cabinet that I had purchased for my apartment.  The old file cabinet had rusted away at the bottom and had seen its better days.  As I looked at the cabinet by the curbside where I had hauled it to be removed by the sanitation department, I recalled those many years it had safely kept my files in an orderly fashion.  The old piece of office furniture had served me well.

         Now my newer more stylish looking file cabinet sits in my California writing office.  It's now over 20 years old, but having been kept in a dry environment it still looks almost like new.  My newspaper articles and other odds and ends are there waiting for me whenever I need a prompt or a memory.

         Do you keep an official "idea file"?    What types of things do you hang onto for purposes of writing research or records?   How do you store your writing files?


       

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Born in the Shadow of the Computer (Part 5): The Last Installment, but not the end of the story

Illustration for "Story of your Life", by Hidenori Watanave for Hayakawa's S-F Magazine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     
        When I started this "Computer" series I didn't actually intend on it becoming a series.  At first I was going to do just one post, but then it turned into a second, then a third, and a fourth.  Then, as I continued writing the story, I realized that this is a saga--a story of not just my life, but of modern history in some ways.  My experience is similar to that of many of you.  My story is the story of many people of my age and older and younger.  Computers truly shadow over us all and provide the setting of the world in which we live.

         But isn't this what memoir is in many ways?   Life doesn't happen in a vacuum.  My life touches your life and your life touches the life of the person who hears your story.  We are all interconnected.  The lessons you have learned can be valuable to another in the same way each of us learn the lessons that others have learned.  My story is not relevant unless the story has some universal meaning and is something to which others can relate.   If you don't know what I'm talking about in my story then how can my story interest you?

       Of course it's up to the writer to clarify the story so a reader can understand and thus identify with it.  The writer has to show the reader what happened and put the reader in the middle of the story.  The life lived should be in turn lived by the reader vicariously through the reading of the story brought to life bigger than life.  The story should exist in every dimension in the reader's mind so that the reader can almost feel that they'd been there, that they'd lived the life alongside the characters portrayed on the pages.

       So what's this have to do with my computer story.  The story never ended on this blog.  When we last left the narrative, my father had died.  After that I got another job that involved computers.  Then this happened and that happened and a whole lot of other stuff happened.   As I dwelt on all of this I realized that my blog is not this computer story.  The story could go on and on and take over Wrote By Rote.  That's when I came to a realization.  The "Born in the Shadow of the Computer" story is more than a blog series.  It could be a book.

         Now don't get me wrong.   I'm not saying I'm planning a book about my life with computers.   But I'm not saying it will never be a possibility.  The story will go into my computer files as seed for some future project perhaps.   The story will germinate and grow perhaps.  Or it may lie dormant.   Whatever happens, I see that this story is organic.   It is a living thing that will grow if I nurture it.

          Do you have a story that you need to tell about your life?   What types of life stories are you most interested in hearing?   If you were following my story, did it interest you?   If so, what about it interested you?

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Meandering With Memoir: Guest Post by Deanna Hershiser

        My guest today is Deanna Hershiser who can be found at her blogs deanna hershiser on the unexpected avenue and From the Third Story awakened again.  In this post she tells us about her experiences in writing memoir and offers some helpful advice about getting memoir writing published.

        I want to thank Lee for hosting me today at Wrote by Rote. He's got a great blog thing going here; we who are interested in memoir writing need more places to go to be inspired.

       Since before I could read and write, I've been presenting stories. I'm grateful to parents, teachers, and friends who encouraged me. Editors, too, helped guide my process, as I contributed to their projects in collaborative ways. Especially I appreciate my husband, who exhorted me to work toward publication, and who has listened to many rough drafts involving himself as a character. He's quite a guy.

       While I love print publications, writing online gives me good ways to practice and experiment. Five years ago I started blogging, and I keep up fairly well at my main site, which you can sample here. Lately I also blog, here, about my conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. I've spent valuable time in a nonfiction group at The Internet Writing Workshop, a helpful space for those willing to receive feedback from various other writers.

Meandering with Memoir

       I first wrote about a friend, another young mother, who died when we were both in our thirties. My initial story sold to a national Christian magazine. The friend's death, my reaction to it, and the reaction of the Christian community I was then part of affected my life, my faith, and my writing. Years later I completely rewrote the story, revealing questions that, in my forties, I felt freer to ask. This piece, "An Overture's Turn," received an editor's choice award from Relief: A Christian Literary Expression and was my launch into creative nonfiction (CNF).

       Next I worked on a book-length memoir about my marriage of 32 years. Like most couples, Tim and I've had our ups and downs. Unlike many wife-writers, I feel compelled to relate through essays our failures. The reasons for this, perhaps a psychologist could fully untangle; I only know they involve God's gift of compassion toward me, and how our marriage journey has made me grateful for this mercy.



      With Tim's blessing, then, I wrote. As it turned out, the first third of my marriage-book manuscript became another essay for Relief, titled "Memorial Day." Later I resold the essay to Mike O'Mary at Dream of Things. Mike's people regularly put out calls for CNF submissions. I was fortunate to be part of the Dream of Things' anthology, Saying Goodbye. My marriage's turn-around story fit their theme of "Saying goodbye to the people, places, and things in our lives." The book has received good reviews and is available here and here.

     

   After my parents retired, I began interviewing my dad. He and Mom returned to his hometown, Eugene, Oregon, where Tim and I live. With gusto, Dad took up his favorite pastime, fishing. He invited me along. This brought back childhood memories -- early mornings out at first light to join Dad in his element. The fish never mattered; I just loved being with Dad. He used to speak sometimes about his fishing friend, Richard Brautigan. The two of them parted ways in the mid-50s, before my birth. Brautigan went to San Francisco and became famous for his weird, whimsical novel, Trout Fishing in America.

      My most recent essay, "From A Damselfly's Notebook," is based on Dad's stories about fishing with Brautigan. It landed in the print journal Rosebud (Issue 51), one of a few publications I used to buy from Barnes & Noble and study. Dad has kindly welcomed other published memoir pieces involving himself, such as a brief essay you can read online at Camroc Press Review and another at The Shine.

       Web journals like these offer submission guidelines. I recommend studying what they publish, giving their guidelines an attentive read, and sending them your own shorter memoir offerings. While they pay only in recognition, such a thing can be quite a boost. You can even link on Facebook to your published essay and wow your friends.

Why Memoir?

       People craft narratives from their lives in different ways. The diversity is great. I loved Frank McCourt's three memoirs, even though I wouldn't write the same way regarding most anything -- religion, sex, etc. He found a poetic voice for what meant most to him. Like music, his prose remained in my mind and drew me back to his pages. Other favorite memoirists of mine include Philip Lopate, Abigail Thomas, Gary Presley, Tim Elhajj, and a fellow Oregonian, Lisa Ohlen Harris. Very different authors, but each captivated by real grit and beauty from their life stories.

      Connections between myself and the lives of others -- my people, my characters -- fascinate me. Fiction would be one way to explore such connections. Some people naturally make it all up to find the truth. Other folks, though, those of us engaged in our dances with memoir, are compelled to begin with stark reality and weave from it meaningful tales.

      The places and the ways I have been with people reveal much to me. Remembering is a sensory experience. It can involve adventures, such as sharing a leaky rowboat with my dad. It involves another sort of effort some days, returning in my thoughts to books that shaped my childhood, to music I clung to during dark seasons. However recollections happen, working with them is one of my most valued efforts. Finding the next ways to do so (assuming my hubby remains patient) will occupy me for years to come.

        I want to thank Deanna for providing us this wonderful look into her writing life and her tips on life writing.  Please be sure to visit Deanna at her memoir blog and see what else she has to say about the topic.

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