I started doing this recently as a request from my mother, who was collecting memories about my grandmother who passed away a few years ago. I’ve always had some very clear memories of my grandmother, but it hadn’t occurred to me that actually putting those moments into words would let me experience them in a different way.

Also, I realized that twenty years down the road when I can’t remember those moments quite as vividly, I’m going to be so thankful I took the time to write them down. So since then, I’ve been writing down little childhood moments. Some are huge, pivotal events, but mostly they’re just the quiet things that made my past magical, things that I would be devastated to lose.

I did this purely for myself, but I’m finding that it’s benefiting other areas of my writing as well. I’m realizing now more than ever how you don’t need to have a capital-E “Event” in a scene for that scene to be powerful. I’ve become more receptive to those little moments that are important to my characters and I’m dialing in to why they are so important, and I think that’s making my storytelling stronger.

Also, since I spend so much time trying to get inside my characters’ minds, I hadn’t realized how liberating it is to just write from my own perspective. It frees me from wondering what’s a ‘realistic’ reaction and I can just focus on taking the emotions of the situation and translating them into words.