Blog TIme!
Wow! There is a lot of interesting stuff to read and experiment with in this weeks explorations, I got so carried away and before I knew it hours had gone by, but isn’t that the way with the internet. I spent most of my time reading entries submitted in “The Memory Archive” -I was sucked into the very personal ones (i.e. “affair”, I don’t know what it is about other peoples “dirt” that we find so interesting). I didn’t really read much of the 9/11 memories, I found them to be all too similar and uninteresting. I did however stumble across some 9/11 memoirs written by children that I really liked, there was something I found so innocent about their writing and thoughts on the devastating tragedy. This is a site I will definitely be back to, perhaps even on a regular basis to submit my own memoirs!
All the explorations helped ideas flow for my own personal essay. I was busy jotting down notes from each of them. “The Writing Life” and “Inkspells’s Memoir Pages” helped me gain a better understanding of how to construct this essay. My mind is now full with what, and what not to do to make a memoir memorable. I am now just having a hard time applying all these helpful hints! “Hidden Treasures” has some good ideas on triggering memories. Its funny how one small significant thing can bring back so many memories? I always thought I just had a bad memory and almost no childhood memories except for what my parents had told me. I could never understand (and was a bit jealous) of how my friends could go into such detail about certain funny/cute events from their childhood, until I went back to my old neighborhood. Almost instantly upon arriving at the house I grew up in, every little thing brought back an entire childhood of memories for me. I realized that most of my friends were born on Saltspring where my family later moved, so they always had those “things” around to remind them. If I had never gone back, those precious memories would probably be lost forever.
I read this weeks reading last week, and I did not enjoy them as much as I did when I read them again this week knowing I would be writing my own memoir. The second time around I was picking up on “style” and ideas to motivate me to start my paper. I can see now how a piece like this can be very meaningful to the writer, but meaningless to a reader unless perhaps they can relate to it in some way. However, I liked how they read as stories. I preferred “My Old Newcastle” more than “Scenes From A Provincial Life” (perhaps because of the length, ha-ha I’m a lazy reader). I found it to be scattered and a bit boring. In both of them I couldn’t help but pick out significant items that may have triggered the memories/emotions of the narrators; like a bicycle, cane, sound of a train, or the river for example. In “My Old Newcastle,” the writer does a wonderful job of expressing his connection to his home town through scent, image and sound. The lines “to this day I find the sound of trains more comforting than lonesome” and how “spring came with the scent of mud and grass burning in the field above us” are examples of how he did this. I think this is what is meant by “showing rather than telling”.
I could semi relate to his story too, coming from a small town myself, and watching it grow and change. Richards states this in his last line perfectly of “a community that is growing slowly farther and farther away from its center. Neither bad nor good, I suppose -but away from what it was.”
All the explorations helped ideas flow for my own personal essay. I was busy jotting down notes from each of them. “The Writing Life” and “Inkspells’s Memoir Pages” helped me gain a better understanding of how to construct this essay. My mind is now full with what, and what not to do to make a memoir memorable. I am now just having a hard time applying all these helpful hints! “Hidden Treasures” has some good ideas on triggering memories. Its funny how one small significant thing can bring back so many memories? I always thought I just had a bad memory and almost no childhood memories except for what my parents had told me. I could never understand (and was a bit jealous) of how my friends could go into such detail about certain funny/cute events from their childhood, until I went back to my old neighborhood. Almost instantly upon arriving at the house I grew up in, every little thing brought back an entire childhood of memories for me. I realized that most of my friends were born on Saltspring where my family later moved, so they always had those “things” around to remind them. If I had never gone back, those precious memories would probably be lost forever.
I read this weeks reading last week, and I did not enjoy them as much as I did when I read them again this week knowing I would be writing my own memoir. The second time around I was picking up on “style” and ideas to motivate me to start my paper. I can see now how a piece like this can be very meaningful to the writer, but meaningless to a reader unless perhaps they can relate to it in some way. However, I liked how they read as stories. I preferred “My Old Newcastle” more than “Scenes From A Provincial Life” (perhaps because of the length, ha-ha I’m a lazy reader). I found it to be scattered and a bit boring. In both of them I couldn’t help but pick out significant items that may have triggered the memories/emotions of the narrators; like a bicycle, cane, sound of a train, or the river for example. In “My Old Newcastle,” the writer does a wonderful job of expressing his connection to his home town through scent, image and sound. The lines “to this day I find the sound of trains more comforting than lonesome” and how “spring came with the scent of mud and grass burning in the field above us” are examples of how he did this. I think this is what is meant by “showing rather than telling”.
I could semi relate to his story too, coming from a small town myself, and watching it grow and change. Richards states this in his last line perfectly of “a community that is growing slowly farther and farther away from its center. Neither bad nor good, I suppose -but away from what it was.”