Narrative

October Memory Challenge #1: Days and Nights

/ Gerry Wilson / 14 Comments

Thanks to Jane Ann McLachlan for this October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge. The challenge is to write about a memory for each of the first 25 years of my life. This is an important exercise for me as a fiction writer.

Remembering isn’t just about memoir. Remembering also gives rise to story. Works of fiction are sometimes, but certainly not always, grounded in what we might call actual truth, but stories also tell their own truth. For me, at least, the seeds of that truth are often found in memory.

I was not an abused child. I have no horror stories to tell. I was an adored child, much loved and wanted. I carry no physical scars and few emotional ones from my childhood. So what is there to write about? Plenty. The dynamics of that household. The time. The place. The culture.

This first memory is supposed to be before the age of two. Since I have virtually no memories that go back that early (except for my mother running the faucet, urging me to “tinkle”), let me introduce you to my parents.

First, my beautiful mother.

Look at that yawn. The story goes that I had my days and nights “mixed”; I slept all day and stayed up most of the night. They would wash my face with cold water during the day to try to keep me awake, but as you see here, it didn’t work. They would get in the car late at night and drive around until I fell asleep, but as soon as they put me back in the crib, I’d be wide awake again. I was not an easy baby. But I was worth it.

Mother and me, all dressed up

And my dad: Handsome, isn’t he?

Daddy and me. He did love his cars.

Daddy and me. He did love his cars.

Daddy was fourteen years older than my mother. He was 32 and she was 18 when they married, but theirs was a marriage to envy.

So this is where my story begins. Both my parents appear in my stories and novels, not as themselves, but as “informants”— a character trait, a gesture, a voice. Laughter, sadness, conflict, loss.

What is your earliest memory? How far back can you go? Have you “used” any of your personal material to create characters?

Starting Tomorrow: October Challenges!

/ Gerry Wilson / Leave a comment

Bring ’em on—the October challenges, that is! Starting tomorrow, I’ll participate in two writing challenges of different sorts.

 

The Submit-O-Rama is the brainchild of Khara House, poet/blogger extraordinaire at Our Lost Jungle. Khara has offered several levels of commitment so we can submit our work during October at a rate we’re comfortable with. I’m going with the one I think I’m most likely to do–the Submit-O-Rama Choice Challenge–wherein I make my own rules. And my rules will be to submit one story a week over the next month–not the same story each time!

 

 

My parents, before I was born.

 

 

The other challenge I’m subscribing to of my own free will is the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge hosted by Jane Ann McLachlan at Join the Conversation. You’ll learn more about this one and my motivation for participating when you read the first memory blog post tomorrow: a memory before the age of two! Jane Ann has encouraged us to be creative, so we’ll see how it goes.

 

 

Both of these challenges are great practices for the writing life!

Visit Khara and/or Jane Ann and join in the fun. It’s not too late! And please do come back here tomorrow to see where the memory lane leads me first!

 

 

Kasie Whitener: Can People in Heaven Read Facebook?

/ Gerry Wilson / 1 Comment

The Writerly Life welcomes Kasie Whitener, whose post delves into the impact of social media on our most personal—and sometimes most painful—moments. Kasie blogs at Life on Clemson Road, but she also teaches and is at work on several fiction projects. Learn more about her at the end of this post.

Can People in Heaven Read Facebook?

My Facebook newsfeed:

I ❤ POTUS! Leigh Johnson Reed changed her profile picture (and my cousin’s beautiful mug). Day 141 for my friend on assignment in Liberia: a picture of her dinner. A picture of Sarah Palin with a snide comment about John McCain picking her over Mitt Romney for vice president. And a ton of “TGIF!!!”

Then, “RIP, Kellye.”

And, “You’ll be missed, Kellye.”

We’ve become a culture that does everything publicly.

Our politics are online: we comment on blogs, share fair-and-balanced articles. Our humor is online: we re-post pithy phrases laid over 1950’s cartoons (“Not all women are moody. It’s just that some of us have had enough of your bullsh**”). We share YouTube videos, clips of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

Our business is online: we fan our employer, Like achievements and re-tweet specials and events to our customers. We’re LinkedIn to everyone we’ve ever met while wearing business casual dress and pretending to care.

We shop online, too: eagerly consuming hand-painted wineglasses, children’s clothing and anything and everything that’s been monogrammed (though that may just be a Southern thing).

Our families are online it’s the only way we’ve ever seen our cousin’s cute new baby. Our faith is online: we Like Bible passages and resurrection images and baptism photos.

So it is a natural progression, right? that we would mourn online? That our tribes, our communities, our families, our “friends” would experience with us the tragedy that has befallen us. After all, we went through theirs.

“I’m so sorry!”

“You’re in my prayers!”

“We love you all so much!”

Someone’s dog was euthanized. Someone’s cat went missing. Someone’s car was broken into, home burglarized, sister divorced, kid diagnosed with a terrible disease, father fighting prostate cancer, great-grandmother passed. People suffer and we suffer with them.

“Praying for you!”

Social Media Network
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the same time this Facebook sharing is both disturbing and confirming. First, it disturbs me that these tragedies find their way into the same medium where we’ve posted Little League Baseball scores, kitten videos, and quotes from the Dalai Lama. How is “rest in peace” appropriate here when just yesterday I wrote, “Go Tigers!” in the same space?

Jewel Blitz wants to share my top score. Amazon wants to tell people I bought a new book. Target lets everyone know I Like it and Jiffy Lube wants to tell people Brando got his oil changed. All of this news goes into my Facebook status update.

So how is, “She will be missed!” appropriate in the same place my RunKeeper App just said, “Kasie finished a 3.75 mile run in 38:22.04”?

I tweet and Facebook repeats: leadership quotes, articles about editing, Clemson sports updates, book reviews and blog posts. I wouldn’t think to Tweet, “Kellye died.” So why would I put it on Facebook?

Are these wall posts meant to offer comfort? Her sister, Kerri, is reading messages from hundreds of people who knew Kellye, people Kerri may have never met. She’s reading how loved her twin was, how many lives she touched. Do those messages on Kellye’s page help Kerri heal? Shouldn’t they? Isn’t that why they are posted?

Or are they another example of our own over-inflated sense of self-importance? Those people who ignore the fact that yesterday this same status update said “I Hate Mondays” and use it today to share their sadness are stuck in their own moment. Facebook is nothing if not self-worship.

Still the sharing is somewhat comforting and I hope wherever Kellye’s faith took her she has access to Facebook. But really, I wish she knew while she was here what a tremendous impact she was having on all of us. I am inspired to tell the people I know how important they are and what good work they are doing.

The power of social media is in the sharing of this tumultuous experience called life. And part of that experience, tragically, is that one beautiful, wonderful, funny, determined girl is no longer with us. And we’re suffering. Together.

I don’t know that blogging about her is any better than Facebooking it, so there’s my disclaimer. What do you think? Are people abusing social media by broadcasting their pain? Or is it the necessary evolution of this new global world?

Kasie Whitener

Kasie Whitener is a freelance writer and professor of English at Strayer University and Midlands Technical College. She’s a member of the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE), the #amwriting.org community, and the Wordsmith Studio. She tweets @KasieWhitener and Facebooks. She blogs at Life on Clemson Road and is currently writing a collection of short stories to submit to literary journals during their acceptance window in the fall. She has several novel projects all of which deal with the moment the late David Foster Wallace described as when a fish recognizes what water is.