Your Life As Story:
Writing Narrative Nonfiction
Crafting A Narrative From Life Experience -- Part II

Look for vivid memory pictures. I call them Shimmering Images, and I¹ve referred to them in this column before. They are the memories you¹ve never forgotten. They appear like photographs in your mind. You¹ve seen them a million times. They¹ve come back to you again and again‹the image of your neighbor hanging laundry on a clothesline, the car running the red light, the package that waited on your doorstep when you returned from work...whatever.

I call these memories Shimmering Images because I believe they actually vibrate with the energy of the story that waits inside them to be told.

These Shimmering Images become the key supports of your narrative. All you have to do it gather them and write them. Just remember they must be Shimmering images from that period in your life when you dealt with the event after which everything changed. If you stay focused on stories from that arc of narrative‹that period in your life‹you will avoid becoming overwhelmed by all the other stuff that¹s happened in your life.

As you are working on this process, you can make a second list, of Shimmering Images. Keep adding others as they present themselves. All you have to do it make a list with a word or two signifying each memory. Then you choose one of the memories and write what you remember. Write each Shimmering Image in a white-hot first draft not worrying about grammar, tense, language‹anything! Just burn your memory onto the page. After you¹ve written a bunch of these Shimmering Images, you will begin to see how they fit together.