“To have an old friend visit from far away – what a delight!” What if that old friend was you? The quote just mentioned is from the introduction to Natalie Goldberg’s book, “Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.” It was a birthday present from a dear friend and I thought it would provide good fodder for a memoir writing group on Extreme Writing Now.
Goldberg also writes that “there is nothing stiff about memoir.” It is not a chronological listing of facts about your life; it is rather those memories that affected your senses and are still present somewhere in you – the smell of the swimming pool, bologna sandwiches made by Grandma, an old tune your mother used to hum. It’s about successes and failures and the emotions underlying them.
For me personally, many memories are vague. I need all the help I can get to bring those memories to the surface. Another book called “Writing the Mind Alive” taught me about proprioceptive writing or tapping into the emotions that are still being held in our bodies. This was fascinating stuff and I have done several exercises with this kind of writing. See my Squidoo lens – Proprioceptive Writing – to find out more.
Each week (or maybe more) I will post an exercise from the book to get you writing. If you want to share your writing, great. If not, that’s okay too. Maybe you just want to share what the experience was like. We don’t have to tell our deepest, darkest secrets to the world, but I know I could share how I used to pick a tomato fresh off the vine, give it a lick, and throw some salt on the wet spot, and then eat it like an apple. To me, this was heaven. So, if this sounds interesting to you, please join in.
At the end of her introduction, Natalie Goldberg says, “Let’s pick up the pen, and kick some ass.”
© 2010, kimmanleyort. All rights reserved.
Tags: memoir, natalie goldberg, old friend from far away, proprioceptive writing, squidoo, Writing
#Writing #Memoir Now http://goo.gl/fb/P4ymT #books #kim #nataliegoldberg #oldfriendfromfaraway #proprioceptivewriting
It is weird that my brother can remember vividly something that I say…huh to. Prompts to memories from online venues like this also spark chatter within families to ‘get’ the information we so want to write about…have no clue about. All such good things I say!
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