Memoir series: new year, old memories

The start of a new year is an ideal time to think about memoir writing. January is named for the two-headed god Janus who looks both forward and back and memoir requires us to turn our minds back into our past. Memoir is writing about the past using memory. It differs from autobiography in that you are not attempting to write your whole life story, but just a moment or an episode in it.

For this first exercise, I would like you to think of the phrase “the turning of the year” and think about any of your memories that belong to this time of year.

Special atmosphere

You might remember the special atmosphere of the days after Christmas and before the new year begins, you might remember family rituals or traditions associated with the start of a year, or the tasks associated with this time on the farm, or think of it as a planning time for spring planting.

The new year is often a poignant time to think of those we have lost and you might want to write about someone who is no longer here – just be sure you feel ready to do this.

Freewriting exercise

One of the exercises we sometimes do in writing to get us started, since it can be hard to begin, is called “writing practice” or sometimes “freewriting” or “morning pages” since some people like to do this as they wake up, but you can do it at any time of the day. This involves taking a starting point and then letting your mind wander freely where it will go with that idea.

So, with this one, you might write “The Turning of the Year” on a page and then just jot down anything that comes into your mind from that phrase. When doing this, part of the aim is to free yourself as much as possible so: try not to stop writing, even if you are just repeating a phrase, keep your hand moving until something else comes. Don’t censor yourself – this is just for you and private, so be as outrageous or angry as you like. Forget about punctuation and grammar and spellings, all the things you were taught to worry about in school – this is a capture exercise, so just keep going.

If this exercise works, it will sometimes throw up memories you have entirely forgotten or unexpected images from which you may be able to write a more developed piece.

One of the things that makes writing distinctive and interesting is detail, so even just thinking about setting down details you observe in the natural world at this time of year, geese visiting from the far north, flocks of long-tail tits coming ahead of the snow; the silhouettes of bare trees on the horizon, these may be things that can take you into specific memories of this time of year and the people you associate with it.

One of my poems that belongs to winter is a poem written for my brother’s wedding, but you can see how it leads into the story of my parents’ wedding at the same time of the year.

You can see how in this poem the two heads of Janus are present, as the poem reaches back to my parents’ wedding, but looks forward to the time when we will use my mother’s wedding dress to dress up in.

I have used poetry here, but you can write a story, a letter, a description.

Good luck with your writing!

Maureen Boyle is a poetry and memoir mentor with the Irish Writers’ Centre.

If any of our readers would like to share writing inspired by this exercise, for potential publication, please email maria@farmersjournal.ie

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