Today, choose a memory from your own life, preferably of a deeply felt emotion (i.e. fear, joy, embarrassment, anger, sadness). Now write the experience as fiction, as if it happened or is happening to your character. It can be either in first or third person, past or present tense. It can as close to the facts or as far as you wish, retaining the “truth” of the emotional experience while creating “fiction.”
This one is very hard, as this is probably one of my worst memories, as well as one of the most clear:
"It's the librarian, isn't it?"
"How in the world did you know that?"
"She's the only co-worker you have ever introduced us to, Dad."
It's summer in 1995. I am newly 15 and my father has just announced he wants to divorce my mother. He says he has met another woman and wants to marry her. Unfortunately for me, this is not a surprise or a shocking revelation, as we share our Compuserve account, and sometimes I am too nosy. I am an avid reader, and sometimes run out of other things to read, or just have time to kill while waiting for AIM to load up. I have read multiple emails from this librarian and ick. They call each other Raja and Rani (King and Queen), and discuss their next meetings. They discuss rendezvous in Paris or Bombay (I only learned the word rendezvous from these emails, I had to look it up in our Webster's Dictionary).
Rani (the evil Queen?) often tells my dad that he should tell us the truth and that she should meet us. She wants us to be a family. She wants to be a friend, not a mother, more like a fun auntie. She tells him that it will be easier out in the open and with open communication. That is not the way my dad works, his idea of a communication is to spring something on you 4 months later (why didn't you close the door in the winter?!). I can smell my Dad's Old Spice as he looks at me, my sister, my brother, and my mother. My mother is not sure what to do or say, I have shown her the emails, but she was taught to be a good Indian housewife. Indian housewives don't argue or raise their voice, they just defer to do "what your father says" or "wait until your father gets home". My grandparents are surprisingly absent, as they live with us, did Dad plan for them to be out when he announced this? One thing is for sure, I am never becoming a librarian.
This one is very hard, as this is probably one of my worst memories, as well as one of the most clear:
"It's the librarian, isn't it?"
"How in the world did you know that?"
"She's the only co-worker you have ever introduced us to, Dad."
It's summer in 1995. I am newly 15 and my father has just announced he wants to divorce my mother. He says he has met another woman and wants to marry her. Unfortunately for me, this is not a surprise or a shocking revelation, as we share our Compuserve account, and sometimes I am too nosy. I am an avid reader, and sometimes run out of other things to read, or just have time to kill while waiting for AIM to load up. I have read multiple emails from this librarian and ick. They call each other Raja and Rani (King and Queen), and discuss their next meetings. They discuss rendezvous in Paris or Bombay (I only learned the word rendezvous from these emails, I had to look it up in our Webster's Dictionary).
Rani (the evil Queen?) often tells my dad that he should tell us the truth and that she should meet us. She wants us to be a family. She wants to be a friend, not a mother, more like a fun auntie. She tells him that it will be easier out in the open and with open communication. That is not the way my dad works, his idea of a communication is to spring something on you 4 months later (why didn't you close the door in the winter?!). I can smell my Dad's Old Spice as he looks at me, my sister, my brother, and my mother. My mother is not sure what to do or say, I have shown her the emails, but she was taught to be a good Indian housewife. Indian housewives don't argue or raise their voice, they just defer to do "what your father says" or "wait until your father gets home". My grandparents are surprisingly absent, as they live with us, did Dad plan for them to be out when he announced this? One thing is for sure, I am never becoming a librarian.
No comments:
Post a Comment