UNLOCKED MEMORIES:
Writing the Story of Your Life
with ALEC GILL and AUDREY DUNNE
A - Z of MEMORY TRIGGERS
- Accounts, articles, advertisements, autobiographies,
- Bible, bric-a-brac,
- Certificates (birth, marriage, divorce & death), collections (cards, stamps, shells, stones), cartoons, church records,
- Diaries, diplomas, deeds, drawings,
- Epitaphs, estate records,
- Family anecdotes, funeral sheets, friends, folklore,
- Games,
- Home movies,
- ID cards, immigration papers,
- Journals, jokes, jewellery,
- Kinfolk, kit-bag,
- Libraries, ledgers, licences, love letters, legends,
- Military items, mortgage docs, mugs, music,
- Newspaper clippings,
- Obituaries, objects, ornaments,
- Photographs, paintings, passports, poems, pets, prizes (Sunday School, etc),
- Quotations?
- Ration cards, recordings (tape, disc, video),
- Scrapbooks, souvenirs, school reports,
- Town records, trunks in loft, tickets,
- University degrees,
- Visits,
- Wills, wedding invitations, work records,
- Xerox documents,
- Yearbooks,
- Zany parties?
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
MEMORY STIRRING QUESTIONS
 | What is your earliest memory? |
| What is your most powerful memory? |
| Describe your parents or the people who brought you up. |
| What were the good and bad traits of your parents? |
| What is your happiest and saddest early memory? |
| Do you remember any friends who were particularly important? |
| What was school like - any interesting ventures? |
| Who was your first love? |
| What difficult decisions did you make about your education? |
| Write about some of your jobs. |
| Any funny tales about life at work? |
| How do your accounts of a situation differ from other peoples? |
| How has your physique shaped your life? |
| What do you remember with real grief or feelings of trauma? |
| What people have been special in your life? |
| How has the Hand of Fate played a part in your life? |
| If a parent, describe the pain and pleasure your children have given. |
| What dramatic turning points have occurred in your life? |
| Can you write about the death(s) of your parents? |
| What would you like to tell those you leave behind? |
JIGSAW PIECES OF LIFE
ADVICE: TIME TRAVEL: Back to your Past!
See each stage of your life as a separate entity and again try to enter into that
stage wholly so that you become that person you were at the time. Get into the skin of
your former self.
Use the development of
| your character; |
| your interests; |
| your changes in life; |
| your work; |
| your play; |
| your friends; and |
| your prejudices; etc. |
to discover who you are NOW and why.
Remember - every situation offers a choice...
But NOW is the TIME TO WRITE - Go for it!
All these JIGSAW PIECES OF LIFE are YOU.
And only you can put them together correctly, because only you have the overall
PICTURE in your mind's eye.
Only you have the grand plan and can put it all together in a unique way...
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Not only feel them??? sensually and sensitively, but feel them emotionally too.
Get trusted friends to listen to you read your work out (first individually and
later as a group) and invite their feedback. Listen to and value their comments
WRITING GUIDES
| Is my story VISUAL? |
| Does it have emotional impact? |
| Is it told from a consistent point of view (childhood)? |
| Do the details make the story clearer and more interesting? Or are they redundant? |
| Does the dialogue help tell the story and make the characters real? |
| Have I kept to one, well-focused incident at a time? |
| Are the characters qualities realistic? |
| Have I set the stage so that the action can be seen |
| Are my feelings about the incident clearly expressed? |
| Does the structure work? |
| Have I improvised appropriately about the facts where memory has failed??? |