MEMOIR AS TIME TRAVEL

Photo by Austin Park on Unsplash

One of the first things writing teachers and mentor often stress is that writers should read. You can always learn something by the way other writers who have gone before you have expressed themselves. They have built the literary tracks to help guide you.

In fact, the French writer Flaubert said that a would-be writer should read fifteen hundred books in order to write one. Well, I don't see that happening, and it would be pretty slow progress if it did.

When I took Alison Waring's Memoir Ink classes, she often read out examples of beautiful writing. It was not just that the words themselves were wonderfully expressive, but that those words had something to teach us.

How did the writer captivate us? What made us follow along? What made the pages become real?

I have to admit, not all of the memoirs she chose to read out to us really lit my fire. But it did make me more aware of what works, in the literary sense.

Even though I'd read for years (and years) it's easy to be pulled along without analysing it. The words just seem to flow and the reader is carried along.

Marnie Summerfield Smith, another of my memoir mentors, was also keen on reading to us from already published memoirs. It was a sort of, “See, this is how it's done,” leading by example way of teaching.

And effective it is as well. Of course, I'm not going to write about hiking in the mountains as Cheryl Strayed did, in her book Wild. Hiking in the mountains would be my idea of hell, but the WAY she carried us along with her, that was the lesson to absorbed, if it could be transferred to us through example.

In her memoir, Strayed shows us the foolhardiness of her youth, thinking that a solitary hike in the wilderness would be a good idea.

It reminded me of myself, when I too, was travelling as a solitary, young and inexperienced female tourist, every bit as naive as her.

For me, the scenario was in Fiji and involved an East Indian taxi driver.

“When I landed on the runway at Nadi, it was my first taste of the tropics. Fiji was the most exotic location I had ever encountered. It had palm trees and turquoise water and warm breezes. It was an extravaganza of lush vegetation.

For a girl who had grown up on the windswept prairies, this was a wonderland. Previous to this, all my winters in Canada were freezing cold, with summers hot and dry and parched. I had no idea nature could be so verdant.

I found a little bed and breakfast, and while I was waiting for my room to be ready, I thought I would go exploring. At the taxi stand, a young Asian man came bounding up to me asking, did I want him to take a take me all round the island and show me the sights.

Did I? Of course!

We set off with my tiny suitcase on the backseat as he drove around the countryside near to the airport. He chatted amiably and pointed out various landmarks, telling me about this and that. I kept looking everywhere, filling my eyes with tropical overload.

We drove up higher and higher into the hills, overlooking the airport, supposedly to see the views. Then my taxi driver took a detour and drove up a narrow road that seemed to be more than a little “off the beaten track”. It was more like a hiking trail than a road. I presumed he was taking me to a special secluded viewpoint.

Yes, he was! It turned out the viewpoint he was wanting me to see was himself!

He turned to me, put my suitcase in the trunk of the car, and said, “Do you like black boys?” I knew what he meant, although he wasn't black. He was actually a very dark skinned Asian man who may have played out this routine before with other lone female travellers. I probably looked like one of those North American hippie kids with loose morals who would be up for anything.

There was not another car, house, or human for miles. We were as deserted as he'd planned we would be.

I decided to try politeness. All I had to fall back on was manners. Screaming for help would have had no effect whatsoever, and might have meant he drove off and left me.

“Ah, no thanks,” I said. To my immense relief, he didn't argue.

He spied the camera around my neck, and said, “You take picture of me?”

“Sure!” I agreed. Certainly better than his original idea!

He seemed happy enough to have me take his photo, lounging against the trunk of a tree, like a male model. Then he climbed up a few branches, and I took another shot. After that, he climbed back behind the wheel of the car, and off we went , back to the bed and breakfast.

If he was just looking for attention, he certainly got it.”

My experience was probably similar to many other young, naïve travellers who get themselves into a sticky situation. Luckily I lived to tell about it.

Looking back, I realize how foolish I was. Reliving that tale for my memoir made me time-travel back to those days, marvelling at my innocence. Such is the power of the written word!

Whether you publish your memoir, or just write it to remember those days, way back when, writing your life story really can be a safe and inexpensive way to discover a time machine!

Until next Monday,

Rose