Personal History Affecting Writing

During Meredith's fun and effective demo today, I realized - once again - that my writing is (forever and always) affected by my personal experiences and passions. My first scene was focused in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, in the United States. I pictured a farmer taking a load of crops to market, traveling on a long and dusty road in tattered clothing. My second scene described a Roman soldier on horseback overlooking a valley in which two armies faced one another. After a moment of silence, the warriors rushed toward one another, and a battle began. Finally, the scene based on the third musical score saw a young woman and her black dog in a lime-green Ford Fiesta on a roadtrip across the Plains States. Out of one window, the dog's nose could be seen; out of the other, the girl hung her hand and waved it in the wind.

All three of these pieces are a combination of my past, present, and future. I love history; I double-majored (English and History Ed) in undergrad and can never remove my fascination with times gone-by from my writing. The Great Depression and Roman solider prove that my mind is constantly thinking about events, people, places that were once - and may still be - significant. I want to read and teach and analyze literature through a historical lens for the rest of my life! The third scene is closer to my own story. When I was in sixth-grade, my family moved across the country from Washington to Virginia, traveling through states like Wyoming, South Dakota, and Iowa to get to our new home. Before we moved, my 6' 7" tall dad drove a lime-green Fiesta we nicknamed "Pookie" (like "book"). These memories, along with my current puppy child, melted together into a pseudo-story of my life.

As I write more and more during SI, I am reminded of just how much our own stories influence the words we put on paper. Lil really drove home this point today when she talked about tapping into our students' wells of narratives and lived experiences. And as I continue to write my "Mentored Memoir," I am attempting to tap into my own well, to use the memories that are there - either just below the surface or buried deep - as inspiration to continue exploring, both myself and the world around me.