A quick jolt of inspiration to start a brand-new project.
Ever smell a certain aroma—Chanel No. 5, fresh-baked bread, electricity-charged air after a rainstorm—and find you're immediately transported to a scene from long ago? Smells are widely known to be powerful évocateurs of memory—and, as it just so happens, memories themselves are literary provocateurs.
Immersing yourself in a memory is not unlike immersing yourself in the world of your story—but it's a lot easier, because it's already happened in real life. Story ideas are a dime a dozen, but an idea that drags behind it a treasure trove of details and feelings is a bonanza.
Story ideas are a dime a dozen, but an idea that drags behind it a treasure trove of details and feelings is a bonanza.
The objective of this exercise isn't to recall a memory and record the scene in painstaking detail (although if you're able to produce a rich and resonant story by doing so, more power to you). We're going to relax, use scent or a song to immerse ourselves in a particular memory, and see what bubbles up to the surface. The thing inside the bubble might be a certain character, a situation, a relationship, an action, or even something more abstract—the mood of an era, for example—but whatever it is, we're going to dip our pen in it and let it flow. If you don't believe this exercise works, just ask Joyce Carol Oates about the inspiration behind her classic, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been." Spoiler: it's a Bob Dylan song—and she was said to have played it on a loop as she wrote.
If you don't believe this exercise works, just ask Joyce Carol Oates about the inspiration behind her classic, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been."
EXERCISE
This exercise, if done with heartfelt commitment, can produce in you a powerful jolt that you can take right to the bank—or the page, as it were.
Step One: Locate Your Kindling Find a scent or a song with the potential to evoke a memory from your past. Don't rush it. Sometimes the oddest smells—or songs you don't even care for!—can take you back in time faster than a DeLorean from an 80s movie!
Step Two: Light the Fire Close our eyes, and sit with the scent, or song, until it seeps into your subconscious. Let the memories flow. Take your time. Wear blindfolds and, shutting out all other senses, let the smell take over. Or if you're listening to a song, go for a drive and listen to it on a loop. Let the memories emerge naturally. Immerse yourself in them.
Step Three: Journal Your Thoughts When you're ready, open your journal and write freely out of that memory. Example: The smell of jacarandas takes me back to a specific day from my youth. I'm a middle-schooler sitting on a cot in the nurse's office, sick with the flu. The jacarandas are level with the second-story window and their smell wafts in, making me nauseated. The kind nurse, who sits at her desk attending to her paperwork, checks in on me every few minutes, increasingly concerned about my greenish tinge. "Want to use the bathroom?" she says. It's a euphemism for throwing up, and this makes me feel even sicker. Finally, my sister shows up on break from her classes at the local community college. She and I aren't exactly the best of friends. My heart sinks. Why couldn't my mom pick me up? My sister walks into the room and thanks the nurse with a wave. She's wearing a weird look on her face and holds a crumpled paper bag in her hands. Hey, nerd, she says. Hi, I say, clutching my stomach. She reaches into the bag and produces a Nerf football with the logo of my favorite team emblazoned on it. The LA Rams. I recognize the look on her face now: Compassion.
Step Three: Write into It, Freely One or more aspects of your memory will really resonate with you. Let it, or them, carry you away. Produce a messy first draft with no concern for plot, theme, or structure. If done right, what's important in this fledgling tale will emerge organically our of your subconscious, without you having to force it to the page. Write with minimal breaks. When you're done, read it over. The big ideas will float to the surface. You'll feel them in your heart. In the example above, the writer may find he's most interested in the relationship between his protagonist and his sister. Or he may find himself immersed in the world of the protagonist's middle-school life when he was, embarrassingly, an awful bully. Notice the "I" in the journal entry above becomes "the protagonist." Create a protagonist to give yourself some freedom—you're writing fiction, not memoir—while remaining immersed in the feelings that the memory has sparked in you.
Step Four: Write into it, Deliberately When you're ready for a rewrite, you'll know what to do. Although the story may change in terms of structure, characters, or even plot, approach every revision by re-entering the "mood" of your piece, and that original spark will continue to live in the heart of your story, in every iteration.
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