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The little book that every aspiring memoirist should read
Introducing the two-word writing prompt guaranteed to keep your memories and your pen flowing, plus the book by Joe Brainard that inspired it: “I remember...”.
The little book that could: I Remember by Joe Brainard is a cult classic and a favorite of aspiring memoirists and memory keepers.
Buy this book now: I Remember by Joe Brainard.
(I don’t suggest borrowing it from the library, because you will want to pull it out next week, in five years, when you’re staring at a blank computer screen or journal page; it’s a tiny book, so it won’t take up too much space on your bookshelf, after all.)
This book is a delight to read. And this book holds the key to writer’s block.
Brainard’s memories, recounted in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, are short and pointed, often mere phrases or single sentences, occasionally a brief paragraph, each beginning “I remember...”:
“I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
“I remember how much I cried seeing South Pacific (the movie) three times.
“I remember how good a glass of water can taste after a dish of ice cream.
“I remember when I got a five-year pin for not missing a single morning of Sunday School for five years. (Methodist.)”
As Ron Padgett writes in the book’s afterword, “Few people can read this book and not feel like grabbing a pencil to start writing their own parallel versions.” Indeed. “It is one of the few literary forms that even non-literary people can use.”
The two-word prompt that never fails
Like many before me, I was first introduced to Joe Brainard’s book in a weekend writing workshop with memoirist Dani Shapiro. She read some snippets out loud and I was immediately enlivened. Our assignment: to write nonstop for 10 minutes, finishing the sentence “I remember…” over and over with no concern for chronology or connectedness.
As she describes, “When I give that exercise at retreats, I look out from where I’m sitting at a sea of people, and not one of them hesitates. Those are extremely evocative words.”
“I remember.”
Those are the words Shapiro calls evocative.
And they are the words that form her (and my) favorite writing prompt: “I remember…” is a steadfast prompt, an old friend that can be pulled out and used often, always to new effect.
As Padgett writes, “Even the smallest [memory] can exert a mysterious tug, and when it is clearly recalled it can release a flood of other memories.”
Your turn: Start writing using the prompt “I remember…”
“Memory is just this storage locker of incredibly rich material and we often can’t get at it when we’re trying to remember something or thinking in some chronological way or straining and reaching,” Shapiro said on an episode of her now defunct Facebook Series, “Office Hours.”
“Where we can really get to it is on the page, following the line of words, and allowing associations to pile one on top of the other.”
So, grab a pen and start writing.
don’t discriminate against memories that seem meaningless or small
don’t worry about making connections between one memory and another
don’t stop until your 10 minutes are up.
Some remembrances will be short and specific. Here are two of mine:
“I remember patent leather black shoes with one scuff on the toe.”
“I remember drinking Diet Coke nonstop when I worked at Vogue. My production assistants swore I needed an IV drip of caffeine. One of them berated me for buying cups of ice from the bodega for a dollar.”
Other remembrances will be more profound, perhaps longer, such as this one from Brainard:
“I remember having a friend overnight, and lots of giggling after the lights are out. And seemingly long silences followed by ’Are you asleep yet?’ and, sometimes, some pretty serious discussions about God and Life.”
Let your mind wander—no restrictions—and your pen will follow. You’ll be surprised by what bubbles up.
“People almost invariably find memories that they didn’t know that they had,” Shapiro said in an interview with Marie Forleo about this exercise.
“We don’t tell ourselves stories in our heads. We have these disparate memories that don’t connect. And when we allow them to be associative and to bounce one off the next, it creates all sorts of interesting material.”
Who should give this writing prompt a try?
Personally, I think the simple phrase “I remember…” as a springboard for writing has universal appeal. It’s fun, it’s alluring, and it’s easy.
It may be especially beneficial for certain people, though.
This writing exercise is good for:
helping you open the floodgates of memory when you feel stuck
warming up at the beginning of a writing session—putting pen to paper and having a relatively easy task (simply finishing the sentence “I remember…”)
brainstorming memories: Without the pressure of remembering something specific, your list will inevitably be diverse and surprising—providing fodder for a future memoir or personal essay.
So if you’d like to discover the power of short reminiscence, and emulate it to create your own list of prompts for future development, well, I Remember is the book for you..
Note: This is an unsolicited review of a book I purchased at full price. I did not receive any compensation or free products in exchange, and any endorsements within this post are my own.
Affiliate disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases from Amazon.com.
P.S. I’d love to hear some of your reflections. What are a few of your favorite things you wrote using the writing prompt “I remember…”? Share in the comments or shoot me an email!
Life Story Links: February 18, 2020
Vivian Gornick's book recommendations and Dani Shapiro's podcast; finding meaning in our—and our parents'—memories; capturing stories in words and pictures.
“History isn’t about dates and places and wars. It’s about the people who fill the spaces between them.”
—Jodi Picoult
Vintage valentine courtesy the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “Love’s message.” New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Looking Back, Finding Meaning
“THE LAST CONVERSATION”
In the latest installment of The New Yorker Documentary series, Robert Kornberg examines his parents’ partnership through the lens of its ending. “The film, which animates the couple’s life through a stream of archival photos and videos, crescendoes to the moment when Robert visits Sarah [who has Alzheimer’s] to deliver the news of Isidore’s death.”
The difficult questions of dementia: How does a son tell his mother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, about the death of her own husband? Listen to his recounting of the experience in the 10-minute short documentary “The Last Conversation.” Photograph courtesy “The Last Documentary,” The New Yorker Documentary series.
THE GIRL SHE ONCE WAS
“Without an archive, where is my evidence? What can I point to and declare: Those first twenty years of my life mattered?” Patricia Fancher writes. “I want someone to tell a story of an outspoken little girl, willing to take risks. But I’ve lost those memories and I have no family to tell me those stories.”
MY BIRTHDAY WISH
On the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I decided to use social media for some story sharing—well, to ask for stories for my birthday, that is. Spoiler alert: The gifts I received in response were more touching and more generous than I ever could have anticipated (thank you!).
Collecting Stories
TRANSFORMATIVE STORYTELLING
Since 2012 students at Colby College in Maine have been visiting a retirement home to write residents’ biographies as part of the volunteer-based Legacy Storytellers. The intergenerational relationships that ensue are worth even more than the resulting books.
“COURTSHIP, MARRIAGE...AND MURDER”
A last minute offer of a cache of family letters, when finishing up a family memoir, led Massachusetts–based personal historian Marjorie Turner Hollman on the path of learning about an unsolved murder in her family.
PORTRAITS OF LIFE
“Each interview has been a journey in its own right and I listened to each individual’s life story as I photographed them. It was like taking a ride on the ‘train of life,’ trading significant and sentimental moments from their past,” says photographer Giuseppe Della Maria, creator of coffee table book Portraits of Tuscan Centenarians.
Recent Recommendations
READING LIST
These five books that made a difference in Vivian Gornick’s writing life will likely make a difference in yours, as well, with lessons including how to write a personal essay and how to find an organizing principle for a short biography.
FAMILY SECRETS
Season three of Dani Shapiro’s “Family Secrets” podcast launched this month. The show, derived from her wildly popular memoir of the same name (which I highly recommend), is worth a listen for a variety of reasons, from Shapiro's soothing voice to her warmly pointed interviewing style, from the intriguing stories to her well-chosen guests who, of late, are often memoir writers themselves (secrets, it would seem, make for fertile fodder).
...and a Few More Links
StoryCorps stories to celebrate Black History Month
Can a presidential memoir (even a ghostwritten one) give an honest picture?
Preserving family recipes is an act of love.
Short Takes
4 easy ways to find your way into life story writing
When the idea of telling your life story is intimidating, write your way in, one memory at a time. These tactics will help you finally get that memoir started.
You’ve thought about writing your life story. Perhaps it’s even on your long-term to-do list. But how to go from a theoretical wish for yourself (to get to “someday”) to an actual thing that you do, a practice that you begin and develop (day after actual day)?
Here are a few specific tactics for helping you begin to write about your life’s journey. As I have written about before, don’t let the idea of embarking on a full-blown memoir intimidate you; rather, start by writing your way in, one memory at a time.
1. Diagram your life.
Some people have one burning story to tell. Others find it difficult to immediately pinpoint anything.
Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life as Story, recommends diagramming your life to gain perspective. To do this, get in a retrospective mood, enlist the help of a friend or spouse (martinis also work), and plot your life’s six most significant moments. When you do it thoughtfully and honestly, there will usually be one pivotal event that stands out as particularly intriguing and/or meaningful.
If there isn’t, don’t worry. There are many different ways to diagram a life. Try dividing yours by critical choices, influential people, conflicts, beliefs, lessons, even mistakes. Experiment until you find the one story that wants to be told, the one experience that really fashioned you.
This exercise asks you to focus on formative experiences—a fork in the road or a small decision that ultimately had great impact on your life. If you prefer to start smaller, skip to No. 2.
2. Brainstorm persistent memories.
By persistent memories I mean ones that return to you again and again, often unbidden. Perhaps it’s memories of cooking with your Nana after school that repeatedly return to your consciousness. Or maybe you can’t let go of that one time you lost out on a promotion to a much-younger colleague. If an experience haunts you, it probably holds greater meaning than even you realize—and writing (or even talking) about it will often help plumb those depths.
Lisa Dale Norton refers to a recurring memory such as this as a shimmering image, one “that rises in your consciousness like a photograph pulsing with meaning.”
“These shimmering images are the source of your most potent stories,” she writes. “They have energy; if you squint at them you will see the edges of the image shimmer, wiggle with potential…. This shimmering is the energy of the story that waits inside the image to be told. That’s why you have remembered these images all these years. Over and over they come back, knocking at the door of your creative soul, waiting to shed light on your life, waiting to share the wisdom that resides inside them.”
So go ahead: Grab a piece of paper and jot down those memories that you revisit often. They’re familiar to you, so a simple phrase will likely suffice to jog your memory later (biking in Yellowstone, working at MoMa, that hand-me-down prom dress). When you are ready to write, use this as your own personal cheat sheet of customized writing prompts.
3. Use guided writing prompts.
There are plenty of family history and life review questions available across the web, including some here on my own site. And while I find that they can be powerful guides for life story writing of all kinds, I am here recommending slightly less direct writing prompts to get your memoir writing going.
Rather than walking through the front door, come in through a side window. Rather than doing a brain dump of your experiences from birth till now, hone in on a particular (unexpected) moment. A feeling as opposed to a plot. A peek inside your home instead of a drawing of your house.
Don’t ask yourself, “What was going to college like?” Do, as Beth Kephart prompts in her memoir writing workbook, “Write about leaving. Write with the understanding that you won’t remember all the details, but you will remember how leaving felt.”
Marion Roach Smith encourages us to “think in propinquities.” Don’t write about turkey and stuffing and saying grace on Thanksgiving, for instance. Instead, give us “an angle shot…a sidelong glance at how you learned new ways to be grateful.”
A few “sideways” writing prompts to consider:
Recall a time you felt unheard.
When have you wanted to turn around and go home?
What do you wish a friend would ask you?
Find more such thought-provoking questions in these Q-and-A card decks and in Beth Kephart’s latest workbook, Journey: A Traveler’s Notes. And discover some of my own favorite life story vignette writing prompts that use your senses to help get the writing flowing.
4. Revisit the past.
Forget about writing. Instead, talk about your memories. Walk down memory lane with a loved one, gather with siblings to reminisce about your childhoods, interview an older relative, or hit “record” on your smart phone during a family reunion or holiday gathering.
The mere act of letting your mind wander back in time will bring memories to the surface and make them accessible when you sit down to write. Also consider jotting down notes while you are chatting with family, or using a voice recorder and an auto-transcription app to generate pages to use during your writing later.
Other ways to revisit the past for inspiration? Read your old journals (even—maybe especially—if they make you cringe!). Pull out some old family photos to jog your memory (check out this free download full of tips if this approach appeals to you.) And, my favorite, go for a walk in nature: As Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
Memory & writing prompts sent weekly to your phone
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Life Story Links: October 8, 2019
Lots about memories, from how we may forget to how we craft them on a page; plus family history, family artifacts, and family foods that hold meaning.
“Every man’s memory is his private literature.”
—Aldous Huxley
Ellen Cantor’s “Prior Pleasures” series of double-exposure photographs (no Photoshop involved!) “explores memory and preservation of the past while ensuring the creation of a visual legacy for the next generation. The books photographed for this series are the ones I have carried with me since childhood,” she describes. Photograph by Ellen Cantor. Learn more in “Seeing Double” below.
Putting Memories into Words
COMFORT FOOD
From alfredo sauce from scratch to a thoroughly gussied up mac-and-cheese from the blue box, Carmen Maria Machado uses the foods that warmed her in the homes that she traversed to walk us through her twenties.
THE AUTHOR WHO DIDN’T CARE TO BE REMEMBERED
In this excerpt from Shadow Archives, a look at the curious case of African American writer Ann Petry—who “embarked on a shred-and-burn campaign” of her journals, letters, and book drafts—and the ways in which we scour those precious remaining archives nonetheless looking for glimpses of her life and motivations.
ALL THAT HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN
My job as a personal historian was ignited by a tribute book I made in honor of my mom after she died, and I regularly help others spark memories that may seem elusive. And yet: I have been haunted by the notion that all the memories of my own mother are…gone.
WHEN MEMORIES MEET THE PAGE
“I had written down just what my client had told me about his aunt. So why did reading the chapter move him to tears?” wonders Massachusetts–based personal historian Nancy West. “Because seeing words on a page is somehow more profound than simply telling the story.”
Pieces of Our Collective Past
IS THAT…?
“Family artifacts hold all kinds of genealogical evidence waiting to be found and added to our ancestors’ stories,” writes Denise May Levenick, aka The Family Curator. Imagine her shock when she encountered a piece of her own family history at a flea market.
HISTORY MADE PERSONAL
Lonnie G. Bunch III, named Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in June, describes five artifacts from the vast collections that hold deep personal meaning for him, and that reflect significant pieces of our nation’s history.
SEEING DOUBLE
“I document the artifacts of the past to enrich the present,” still life photographer Ellen Cantor says. “I am interested in reimagining the family photo album and objects that hold personal histories in order to explore the distillation and persistence of memory.” Read about her multiple-exposure series exploring the pleasures of childhood reading, and head over to her website to browse some of her other work, including Family and Visual DNA.
...and a Few More Links
Washington State Parks is collecting oral and written histories of Mount St. Helens’ 1980 eruption.
The Family Narrative Project is offering a recipe storybook online course.
Story Corps. seeks support.
Short Takes
Are my memories of my mother gone?
As the tenth anniversary of losing my mom approaches, I have been caught up in thoughts of the past—but where are those vivid memories that once flooded me?
Me and my mom in the front yard of our Putnam Lake, New York, home, June 1971
Lately I have been having a recurring dream. It’s not a good dream, and it haunts me throughout my days. Have I lost all memories of my mother?, I wonder. I awake not knowing, searching, afraid. Of course I haven’t lost them all…but my fears are real, grounded in my reality that I have no one in my life to talk to regularly—deeply—about this most special person in my life.
Usually I share advice-driven stories on this blog. I decided, instead, to share some recent writing I did about my mom, and my experience of grief, here. Why? Because I think personal stories connect us. Because I think the grieving process, while unique to each of us, is also universal in many ways.
And because too often I hear the words, “What stories do I have to tell that matter?”
And while everyone—truly, everyone—has stories to tell, sometimes it’s the stories we can’t tell that may resonate; the ones we have to search for, feel rather than see, that come forth. Just because I am not relating specific details of memories of my mother in this passage, it was worthwhile for me to write—cathartic, yes, but helpful too on my path to remembering yet more, and honoring my experience as it is being lived, right now.
Soon I will share a post about ways to access and trigger our memories in an effort to write meaningful memoir. But for now, as the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death approaches, I offer up this most personal (and brief) piece as an example of what may result when we focus on our experience of, well, not remembering.
Losing Her, Again
It is not reconstructed memory or exaggerated legacy to say that there are no superlatives great enough to convey my love for my mother. She was my role model, best friend, hero, and champion. My daily phone call. My witness.
Lately, I can’t remember her.
I want movie reels.
I want to see my mom lunging toward me for a hug, leaning back into a belly laugh that could go on for minutes. Pulling groceries out of the trunk of her brown Mazda, closing her eyes as I drive across a bridge. Smelling daisies in the kitchen, back-to-school shopping at Petrie’s five-and-ten. Playing kickball in the front yard in Brewster, making quiche in my galley kitchen in Brooklyn. I want to see Lillian Roode, here. Somewhere.
If my memories are silent films, that’s okay. Hearing her voice would bring me to tears, joyful tears; but seeing her in motion—well, maybe I could touch her, if I just reached far enough.
After she passed away I was feverish with intent.
I wrote her eulogy over the course of a fews hours in the middle of the night, between sessions breastfeeding my three-month-old son, in a nondescript motel room lit only by the glow of my laptop. I was hungry for stories of her—stories I had not yet heard that would shine a light on her soul, stories I had heard so many times they had become lore. The new kept her alive, the old brought comfort amidst the knowledge that she was, indeed, not alive.
At her wake, I listened to all that friends and families offered up, though I heard very little; I was present that day in body, not spirit.
Months later I would surrender to my insomnia and reach for the ornate journal I never wrote in for fear my musings would not live up to the grandeur of the leather-bound book, and I would write and write and write, hardly pausing for breath: bulleted lists in barely legible handwriting enumerating every single little memory I had of her. I wanted them all. When I would pause to think and memories did not wash over me immediately, I felt unworthy. Of my grief, of my happiness, of her belief in me.
Some nights I wrote the same memories I had scratched out the previous evening. No matter; I was desperate to not forget. My neat, deliberate script turned into sprawl as I raced to recover my dreams, convinced as I was that they held secrets of her in the beyond, glimpses of the memories I couldn’t access on demand.
Where did they go, my memories?
I have no one in my life who shares my familial grief, no one who knew my mother for the length of time that I have and who misses her the way I do. No one in my life with whom to reminisce, swap stories, or get lost in laughter.
I want to cry.
I want to occasionally swim in my grief. To allow myself to fill that hole inside me with buoyant water and float amidst my memories. To invite another in to see my mother’s reflection alongside me, to recognize her in me, and to find her somewhere in the void.
If not occasionally, perhaps once.
But.
The hole is there. The memories, the tears, are not.
Where did they go?
Life Story Links: May 14, 2019
A wealth of reading on the enduring power of family stories and the elusiveness of memories, plus recommended first-person reads and memoir writing prompts.
“Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.”
—Michele Filgate
In Honor of Mother’s Day
REMEMBRANCE OF SOUPS PAST
“Maybe, decades from now, my own kids will uncover a cookbook from long ago, turn to a yellowed page and a recipe for soup that they’ll remember from childhood,” John McMurtrie writes upon finding his mother in the pages of her favorite cookbook.
THIS BOY’S LIFE
“Even allowing for the vagaries of memory, for the various ways different people may interpret the same event, it doesn’t follow that the stories we tell from our experience are not to be trusted simply because they are personal.” Tobias Wolff on the iconic memoir he never intended to write.
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
In this excerpt from What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, writer Lynn Steger Strong revisits, with a fair amount of distance and a little bit of compassion, scenes (and recurring themes) from her relationship with her mom. In the eagerly anticipated new book, 14 other writers also “take the sacred mother-child ideal down from its pedestal and inspect it, dissect it, run tests on it, muck it up a bit.”
WISH YOU WERE HERE, MOM
Mother’s Day can be challenging for those of us who have lost our moms. I find that lingering in our memories can help (and, yes, also hurt). Here, a very personal tribute I wrote in grief, and love.
Then and Now
“AND NOW, I’LL NEVER KNOW”
“[My grandfather] always had the perfect anecdote for any situation at his fingertips,” Samantha Shubert, a NYC–based personal historian writes. And yet, she never asked him about certain aspects of his past, even as he entertained the family with stories well into his eighties.
SENSE MEMORIES
In Part One of an ongoing series on Life Story Vignettes Writing Prompts, I offer five specific exercises for writing about your memories by engaging all your senses.
WHAT WE KEEP
“Knowing that their mother and grandmother had held this very same object, had felt those same edges and that same weight, was part of the experience, enhancing the memory and also adding another layer to the emotional connection,” subjects told author Bill Shapiro of their most meaningful objects.
MEMORY LANE
Accenture is using Artificial Intelligence to combat elder loneliness and preserve generations of memories in Stockholm. Listen to a few conversations captured through the project, dubbed Memory Lane, and explore why the company took on such an important challenge.
Picture This
SECOND TIME’S THE CHARM
About 10 years ago video biographer Stefani Elkort Twyford, owner of Legacy Multimedia in Houston, scanned her parents’ large photo collection. Now she is taking on a re-do of the project, using her accumulated knowledge about genealogy and digital preservation to get it right—and is discovering some nice surprises along the way.
A PAST NOT OUR OWN
In “How Eudora Welty’s Photography Captured My Grandmother’s History,” Natasha Trethewey finds context and inspiration. “Welty’s photographs were, for me, a resource, a way to see a time and place I’d only encountered in history books and my grandmother’s stories.”
ONE PHOTOGRAPH
History of Memory, a brand collaboration with HP and a winner at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival’s X Awards, is a series of short episodes that hone in on the power of photographs to move people—and even change lives. See a preview here:
Holocaust Remembrance
SURVIVOR STORIES EVER-RELEVANT
“As survivors become endangered, and their flames extinguish, they rely on the next generation to not only light new candles, but to bear witness—both for the dead and the living.”
“GATHERING THE FRAGMENTS”
"It's a small testimony to what happened, another drop in this sea of testimony. It doesn't uncover anything new. The facts are known. What happened happened, and this is another small proof of it." As the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, Israel preserves their memories.
Recommended First-Person Reads
SELECTIVE MEMORY
“How can I blame them for choosing to forget in order to survive? And how can I not think about what may happen as a result—future generations, grasping in the dark for their own histories?” Victoria Huynh seeks the stories of her refugee family.
A MOST PERSONAL PERSONAL HISTORY
“Helping my aunt write her memoir, I realized that her story was my story, also,” Massachusetts–based personal historian Nancy West writes. “We are related by blood and DNA and history, and as she told me about her forebears, I saw my own backstory filling in with details I’d never known.”
BRIEF YET MIGHTY
Two distinctly divine pieces from the latest issue of Brevity that illustrate the power of concise, vivid writing from life: “A Legacy of Falling,” by Jenny Apostol, and “My One, My Only,” by Michaella A. Thornton.
...and a Few More Links
All the Way: Joe Namath memoir “as exciting as it is personal”
The StoryCorps podcast is back next week with a new season of stories.
Adam Gopnik on the new biography of Theodor Geisel, Becoming Dr. Seuss
In China, a podcast inspired by ‘This American Life’ showcases stories of everyday life.
Short Takes