You are writing your biography – and suddenly you`re stuck. How to access your earliest memories when it is a jumble of vague images, mixed emotions, and scattered recollections?
WRITING A RICH AND SATISFYING BIOGRAPHY
Writing a rich and satisfying biography really depends on how you manage to go back in time to retrieve your truest first memories. Those memories may be fluid and not fixed with times and dates. But their significance is great, because what happens to us when we are young, impacts the narrative of our whole life.
“A book is a fairy tale. It begins as a dream and ends up as a dream fulfilled,” writes Sheldon Cashdan in The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales.
Writing your biography is such a dream. Accessing memories and putting them into words and a logical sequence is a journey that feels both exhilarating and terrifying.
YOUR MEMORIES ARE AS UNIQUE AS YOUR FINGERPRINTS
Yes, we have larger narratives playing out in the world and we are all equal in that we are born, we live and then we die. But the story of the individual is always more powerful than a history lesson in time and place. In other words: what happened to you, in a specific context, matters.
A GENIUS AT WORK: J.M. COETZEE
In Boyhood: A Memoir, one of J.M. Coetzee`s first memories are of his mother learning to ride a bicycle in the conservative small town of Worcester.
“Then one day, without explanation, she stops riding the bicycle. Soon afterwards the bicycle disappears. No one says a word, but he knows she has been defeated, put in her place, and knows that he must bear part of the blame. I will make it up to her one day, he promises himself… The memory of his mother on her bicycle does not leave him…He does not want her to go. He does not want her to have a desire of her own. He wants her always to be in the house, waiting for him when he comes home. He does not often gang up with his father against her: his whole inclination is to gang up with her against his father. But in this case he belongs with the men.”
Coetzee describes it almost as an anecdote. But look at the richness of information he provides his reader with! The context of a small Afrikaans town. The restrictions on women, the selfish nature of a child, the role of the father figure – he opens a historical sense of Afrikaners and South African life by using three characters – mother, father, son – and the simple act of bicycle riding. In doing so, Coetzee sets the stage for the unfolding of his memoir.
Coetzee is showing us his memories, not telling it. And that is how good writing becomes great.
THERE IS A POOL OF POTENTIAL MEMORIES YOU CAN DRAW FROM
Recent research in the mental health field, by Carole Peterson, shows that our earliest memories may begin at age two and a half, about a year sooner than previously thought.
The research also found that just how far back any one individual’s memory goes, depends on a variety of factors, such as:
- culture
- nationality
- home environment (urban vs. rural)
- how your parents recall their memories
- intelligence
- birth order
- the size of your family
- gender
HOW TO USE MEMORY WHEN WRITING YOUR BIOGRAPHY
Your writing coach will assist you to find ways in which you can access your earliest memories. A one-on-one session, with guidelines to encourage and assist you, can be enormously helpful in kickstarting the process.