Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing
()
About this ebook
Suddenly we remember, triggered by a familiar smell, the taste of a cookie, the touch of soft skin. Flash, and we are back in the past. Memories. They are elusive, mysterious, with a mind of their own. If only we could harness them and turn them into memoir.
Now you can. In the amount of time it takes to brush your teeth, you can jot down a memory to be later expanded upon or used in sequence with others. Flash Memoir: Writing Prompts to Get You Flashing will guide you in constructing a portfolio of short pieces. Random memories are the building blocks not only to memoir but to scenes which you can draw upon for other writing.
Using a process I call write right now, I help the writer to harvest the urgency of sudden memories.The prompts in this book are designed to spur memories, to get you writing. I’ll also direct you to resources, authors to read and study, and places to submit. A number of the flash prompts included in this eBook were harvested from my blog: Memoirous
Jane Hertenstein
Jane Hertenstein is the author of over 70 published stories, a combination of fiction, creative non-fiction, and blurred genre both micro and macro. In addition she has published a YA novel, Beyond Paradise, and a non-fiction project, Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady, which garnered national reviews. She is a 2-time recipient of a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. She also is in demand as a seminar teacher for Flash Memoir. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Hunger Mountain, Rosebud, Word Riot, Flashquake, Fiction Fix, Frostwriting, and several themed anthologies. She can be found at http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/. Her latest eBook are Freeze Frame: How To Write Flash Memoir and 365 Affirmations for the Writer.
Read more from Jane Hertenstein
365 Affirmations for the Writer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFreeze Frame: How to Write Flash Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Flash Memoir
Related ebooks
Memoir Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5123 Prompts for Poets & Novelists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Memory to Memoir: Writing the Stories of Your Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto for Better, Braver Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer's Companion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWrite Starts: Prompts, Quotes, and Exercises to Jumpstart Your Creativity Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Write That Memoir Right Now Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWRITE WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Soul of Place: A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBreaking Ground on Your Memoir: Craft, Inspiration, and Motivation for Memoir Writers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing from Within: The Next Generation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heart on the Page: A Portable Writing Workshop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing from Deeper Within: Advanced Steps in Writing Fiction and Life Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Exploring Poetry of Presence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Memoir Workbook Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer's Guide for Turning Artifacts Into Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNext Word, Better Word: The Craft of Writing Poetry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings30 Days to Your First Poetry Chapbook. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn a Flash!: Writing & Publishing Dynamic Flash Prose Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoetry Power: Writing, Editing, & Publishing Dynamic Poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWriting for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to write your poetry Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Practicing Poet: Writing Beyond the Basics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarth to Poetry: A 30-Days, 30-Poems Earth, Self & Other Care Challenge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Language Arts & Discipline For You
The Lost Art of Handwriting: Rediscover the Beauty and Power of Penmanship Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grammar 101: From Split Infinitives to Dangling Participles, an Essential Guide to Understanding Grammar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Get to the Point!: Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Speed Reading: How to Read a Book a Day - Simple Tricks to Explode Your Reading Speed and Comprehension Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn Sign Language in a Hurry: Grasp the Basics of American Sign Language Quickly and Easily Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5500 Beautiful Words You Should Know Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Barron's American Sign Language: A Comprehensive Guide to ASL 1 and 2 with Online Video Practice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dirty Sign Language: Everyday Slang from "What's Up?" to "F*%# Off!" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Everything Sign Language Book: American Sign Language Made Easy... All new photos! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Easy Spanish Stories For Beginners: 5 Spanish Short Stories For Beginners (With Audio) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I Will Judge You by Your Bookshelf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Show, Don't Tell: How to Write Vivid Descriptions, Handle Backstory, and Describe Your Characters’ Emotions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels: How to Write Kissing Books, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Talk Dirty Spanish: Beyond Mierda: The curses, slang, and street lingo you need to Know when you speak espanol Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Write A Children’s Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Flash Memoir
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Flash Memoir - Jane Hertenstein
Introduction
What sparks memory? Something as simple as a whiff of lilac can summon up a scene from our past. That one memory may lead to others, setting off a cascade until suddenly we are lost. Remembering can be a type of daydreaming—or for others self-torture from which they can never escape.
Thank God there are limits to memory.
With long-term memory we are able to reach back to a pool of memories. Be they collective or individual, there are things we simply know. Some of us, mostly husbands, are afflicted with short-term memory, the ability to hold a certain amount of information for only a short time. Whether long or short, many of us contrive to retain a to-do list or study for tests or to order flowers for a special birthday. This is working memory.
Yet what about those memories which come to us unbidden, at the most inconvenient times, random, without logic? I call this flashing. Synapses set in motion or triggered by seemingly unrelated external prompts.
The five senses are some of the strongest agitators of memory. Recall Proust in In Search of Lost Time or also known as Remembrance of Things Past where he writes about involuntary memory instigated by a simple cookie. Dunking a tea biscuit can easily lead one on a journey into the past. Some call this nostalgia or déjà vu. Sometimes memories are aroused by conversation with another or with relatives around a table at Christmas time.
One thing is sure: We often have no control over what we remember or forget. Because of trauma some memories are suppressed or hidden until awoken by similar tragedy or uncovered by psychoanalysis.
Which leads us to false and true memories. Total Recall was the name of a science-fiction movie. No one has the ability of total recall. Always our memories will be challenged by objective reality, by others. My sister will remember the exact same event much differently than me. Her perspective can accommodate or lend another aspect to the event, or run completely counter. I am not a psychologist or neurologist, able to point out which lobes or parts of the brain are in charge of what, though I know the hippocampus is thought to be the center of memory—and emotion. Much of what we remember is emotionally charged. Anne Sexton is quoted as saying: It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
Sometimes this is all we have, and we must begin there.
Word counts vary, but generally flash is thought to be 1,000 words or less. Some journals in their submission guidelines can be very specific. Smokelong for instance asks for flash that can easily be consumed in the amount of time it takes to finish a cigarette. One journal may want 66 words while another request only 6, just read guidelines carefully. Flash as a form can be applied to almost any genre. There are flash mysteries. Postcard flash might only be about travel—you are limited to the amount of space typically taken up by the back of a postcard. Flash foodies write very small about . . . FOOD. I write flash memoir.
For some of us sitting down to transcribe or pen a memoir can be an overwhelming task. I recommend approaching it in bite-size pieces or rather applying flash. If one simply acts upon a sudden revelation or flash of memory by writing it down then after a certain amount of time you have accumulated a portfolio of scenes. Enough of these sketches or scenes and you may be able to connect them into a memoir. By freeze framing a moment, a memory, like a camera snapshot, and dwelling there you are creating the foundation for longer memoir, a jumping off place to expand upon later.
Yet so many of us tend to ignore these flashes. We think later yet later on we might have forgotten or lost the relevance of the moment, the urgency that led us there. I recommend a process I call write right now. In the amount of time it takes you to brush your teeth, you can jot down the memory and an outline which can be filled in later. The nice thing about flash is that it can be unresolved. There often isn’t enough space/word count to fully explore the memory. And, like so many of our memories, there is an undercurrent of lose threads, fuzzy blurred beginnings and endings with little or no significance. They simply are. We do not have to fight to form them into a 3-act script. Or, by writing about the memory, you might (possibly not all at once, but eventually) find meaning to it or a continuity of time.
What I love most about flash memoir is the inconsequential. The ordinary. Again, by freeze-framing a moment we are capturing it, holding it, and then letting it go for others. Some of the best writing resonates with us because we have a similar memory or experience. Memoir is a way of validating what we think happened and also relating to others. In many ways we all share the same human emotions that are expressed through memory. And, like Proust’s madeleines, hanging laundry is not simply hanging laundry but can be an act of self-sacrifice, devotion, a symbol of great love. The essence of the ordinary, though humble, reveals an extraordinary life. One built upon sublime moments that may add up to an epic memoir. If only you begin.
The prompts in this book are designed to spur memories, to get you writing—be it fiction or non-fiction. That’s right, just write it. The basis of all good fiction is rooted in autobiography. So begin with a memory and see where it leads. Later you can sort out truth from pure invention—depending on the ultimate goal of the piece. When submitting flash, I channel it through either a journal’s fiction or non-fiction portal depending upon the final result. Mostly what journals want is good writing.
I’ll also direct you to resources, authors to read and study, and places to submit. Ultimately you’ll want to check my website as that is where I’ll continually be updating, purging broken or old links, and putting up new ones. All of the flash prompts included in this eBook were harvested from my blog series: http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/ where I posted a prompt every week for a year. So write right now—and enjoy!
Hot Flash: Centerville, Ohio
Sense of place, though not one of the infamous five senses, is nevertheless strong. Perhaps it goes back to early man, roaming the Vézère Valley of what is now Dordogne, France. Yet even these Neanderthal creatures had the wherewithal to create through art by decorating their cave walls. Maybe it’s something as simple as marking
their spot. An innate sense of mortality that tells them to leave a record—that they were once here.
We are all marked by place, it informs who we are.
I am a fan of the New York School of Poets. Not a school at all but an informal group of friends who wrote poetry and art reviews and