Smell: The Expressway to Memory

It’s nothing new to say our sense of smell is an expressway to memory.

file000284162710One whiff of black pavement on a hot day, and I am at Six Flags in the heat of summer during the late ’70’s.

My dad worked a mile or two away, so he would drop my sisters and me off for the entire day. We’d run circles through the amusement park, make repeat rides on the Shock Wave, cool off in the Cave Ride, and go home exhausted from the heat but charged in fun with our feet covered in black tar residue.

In Naming the World, Bret Anthony Johnston writes about the power of sensory details in fiction or in nonfiction, reminding us that great details simply pull at “snatches of memory and image,” allow readers to fill in the rest:

The most affecting descriptive writing results from an author’s providing not a linguistic blueprint of a library but the raw material (the air tinged with the scent of old pages, the shafts of dusty light diffused through window slats, the whispers, like trickling water, of the librarians behind the oval reference desk) from which the reader can erect her own library.

IMG_0695Recently, Kim Suhr from Red Oak Writing visited the group of writers at Harwood Place. I love inviting visiting teachers to this group not only because they bring a fresh perspective on craft and critique but because they often bring new exercises as well.

Kim talked about sensory details and walked the writers through the beginnings of a wonderful exercise that taps into memory through smell and opens the door for story.

IMG_0696She asked the group for a list of smells that evoke strong reactions, good or bad. The exercise: choose one from the list and write on it, starting with the sentence, “I smell ________, and I am _______.”

I smell skunk, and I am on a two-lane road in the middle of Texas….

Where are you?

 

Writers at the Table: Meet Richard Borchers

IMG_0562Once a month, I meet with writers at the Harwood Place retirement living center, and every so often I get to share one of their storiesToday, I’m excited to introduce Richard Borchers. 

Richard is a long-time member of the group and a committed writer. He always brings great stories to the table, including this one inspired by a prompt from Patricia McNair’s daily prompt list. 

. . . .

He was never good with the camera.

Graduation from high school was the occasion for getting his very own camera. Congratulatory gifts afforded him a moderately priced “Argus.” Somehow, he just knew it could produce very good slides and prints.

The first roll of film he purchased was returned to the drug store and exchanged for one proper for the camera. With help from a few more experienced “shutter bugs,” he mastered the trick of opening the lid and getting the precious capsule into the little box. He found “f-stop” but wondered, Where is the “f-go?”

The strange, new technology seemed almost beyond comprehension. He thought, If this little machine is going to be my friend, I guess I’d better read the manual.

After several months of shooting pictures, it still was no surprise when a roll of twenty frames would come back from the developer with three or four undeveloped. Did he leave the lens cover on? Was it a double exposure? Why were so many blank? It must be the drug store’s fault!

Sometimes, his camera was left sitting on the shelf, not really forgotten but more like just neglected. But when he was traveling or on vacation, the Argus was always with him. He found joy and satisfaction just to have a few pictures to share when he got home and memories to store away in albums. After some time, his photography skills improved a little bit. Still there were plenty of heads cut off, or legs, or arms, or that favorite uncle who had come a thousand miles just to have his picture taken. Too bad he was at the end of the row instead of in the middle.

However, he has this one incredible shot when everything came together just right.

The occasion was on the trip back from Seattle on the Amtrak. Attempts at taking scenery pictures from a moving train are not likely to be very good, he thought. But there was the camera, lying on the chair next to the bunk where he was sitting. It was primed with the toggle set for taking a panorama. It was beginning to get dark, and the train was speeding through Glacier National Park away from the sunset. Looking out the window over his shoulder, he grabbed the Argus and clicked the shuttle.

Putting it away for the night, he wished he were good with the camera.

. . . .

Over the shoulder and out the window: Glacier National Park
Photo by Richard Borchers

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“Happy accidents are real gifts….” ~ David Lynch

 

Taking It All In: Details in Writing (& a Prompt)

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Lately, I feel like I’ve blathered on and on about how we incorporate details in our writing:

Enough is enough, right?

Or, is it?

Every time I come across a new article on the way details work in crafting a good story, I learn something new, or I am reminded of a forgotten element of the technique. Either way, how I use details keeps resurfacing in my work and in my discussions about the work, so I’d best keep listening.

In her essay, “Everything Has a Name (Or, How Gardening Made Me a Better Writer),” on Grub Street Daily, Celeste Ng hits on why writers must continue to hone this skill:

[Y]our job, at its heart, is to give everything—objects, events, emotions—its precise name.  Not “flower,” but He was waiting for the geranium.  Not “summer,” but Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects.  Not “beauty,” but this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. . . .To be a writer, you don’t need to have the name of every plant, or every tool, or every bird, at the ready.  But you need to find it, to point your finger and make the reader slow down, pay attention, look closer.

Slow down. Pay attention.

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Your work will translate into a better read for your audience.

The Prompt

Lost or Found. Write about something you lost or something you found.

Consider the specificity of your details. Don’t dress them in adjectives but give them names.

* Photo credit: Microphone, doctor_bob on Morguefile.com; Kids, me.