How to write memory when you can’t remember

Ways in and out of what you've forgotten

I have some writing notes and techniques for you this Friday (I’m trying to send these crafty missives to paid subscribers at least once a month), but before I jump in, some news:

• I talked with

  Tracy Clark-Flory
  about the labor of sex, motherhood, and marriage—and the question of what we're 'working so hard to maintain.'

• Reading the Comments 👀
  pod is live and paid subscribers of Mad Woman get a discount on the whole season—access your discount here then listen to the first episode on the Surgeon General’s parenting advisory here

• I’m working on an essay swap for members of our Writing Group (that’s founding subscribers)— I won’t be able to give feedback on essays, but I’ll coordinate the swap and offer tips for feedback and a debrief/AMA on the other side, once you’ve all read and commented on each other’s work. To participate, upgrade your subscription to Writing Group and on Monday the 21st we’ll meet on Zoom at 1pm PT to exchange essay drafts (link forthcoming).

Earlier this week, I wrote about the power of memory in a culture of forgetting. One of the memoir classes I’m currently teaching is also about memory, so clearly, I have been thinking a lot about how memory connects to the work of nonfiction. The more I teach and talk my way through this subject, however, the clearer it becomes to me that writing memoir and the essay has very little to do with an author’s ability to remember— even if the genre itself, I believe, has so much to do with the preservation of cultural memory.

Let me explain. I often find students are preoccupied with the poor quality of their memories. They think perhaps they are not cut out to work in the genre if they don’t have photographic recollections of important events, or if they failed to take proper notes when going through a period they’d now like to write about.

Sometimes this worry has to do with the patchy nature of traumatic memory, and the pain that kind of forgetting causes those of us who live with it. There’s a desire to remember, but an inability to do so. This is understandable, but not necessarily as serious a hurdle in a craft sense as some writers think it is.