Folding Memories into Story

Writing What You Know

Ernest Hemingway, the wonderful author of great works such as The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls, was a master of folding memories into story. After he had received another bout of shock treatments, he said to a friend, “What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient. It’s a bum turn, Hotch, terrible.”

He committed suicide not long after that. Without memory, many writers would be at a loss as to what to write. Writers tend to write what they know, and folding memories into story is a common practice.

In each of the six books I’ve written, I’ve folded in my memory or my mother’s, my cousin’s, my husband’s, or through my mother, my baba’s. Like the strings connecting pearls on a necklace, I’ve also used my imagination to connect these memories or embellish them to create the drama needed to tell a good story.

Memories in A Cry from the Deep

Though my debut novel, A Cry from the Deep, had me researching fields I knew little about—scuba diving, marine archaeology, salvaging, psychics, and Irish folklore—there was plenty of story that used my memory. I found myself folding memories into story from our trips to Ireland, New York, and Provence. Slides of our trip also helped me visualize the landscapes that my protagonist, Catherine Fitzgerald, an underwater photographer, visited and worked in.

My love of snorkelling had me recalling my experience underwater and how wonderful that felt—how time stood still and how delighted I was to see brightly coloured fish and sea vegetation.

Having been a therapist myself, I also used my memory to write the chapters when Catherine needed to see one. And when she flew to New York to drop off her child with her ex-husband, a psychiatrist, I used my memory to fashion him after one of the psychiatrists I worked with in a mental health setting.

Memories in The Rubber Fence

Similarly, in my second novel, The Rubber Fence, inspired by my first job as a psychiatric social worker on a psychiatric ward, I again called upon my memory to draw from the people I worked with and the patients I witnessed seeking treatment.

Here again, my memory, research, and imagination helped me weave a story about Dr. Joanna Bereza, a passionate psychiatric intern, who tries to stop an arrogant psychiatrist, Dr. Myron Eisenstadt, from shocking her patients. Her friend on the ward, a young homosexual intern, was drawn from my memory of a homosexual psychologist I once worked with. At the time in my novel, 1972, homosexuality was considered a psychiatric illness. 1972 was also a significant year for another wave of feminism. It was the year, the Ms. Magazine was first published. Again, having lived through this significant time in history, I was able to scan my memories to write this story.

Memories in Lukia’s Family Saga

Not long after The Rubber Fence was published, I began to write my trilogy: Lukia’s Family Saga. Thank God, I had my mother’s stories on my computer. During the last two decades of her life (in her 80s and 90s), I recorded her tales on my laptop. She was a wonderful storyteller, but because she would ramble and move from one tale to another without stopping, I ended up writing her anecdotes down just to keep track of her stories myself. I never thought I would do anything with them, except keep a family record for our children and grandchildren.

Many of you know who inspired me to write this family story. Even though my mother once said that her life would make a good book, it wasn’t until our granddaughter, Chloe said, after hearing one of my mother’s anecdotes, “Bubby, why don’t you write your mother’s story?” (Side note: my mother was still alive, so she was Baba, and my mother-in-law was grandma, so my dear Jewish friend suggested Bubby, and I liked it and went with that). Chloe’s encouragement was the push I needed. So, I began writing and folding in my mother’s memories, which were also my baba’s—into Sunflowers Under Fire.

Mom gave me plenty of scenes and characters of her life in Kivertsi, Ukraine during the14 years she lived in the old country. During that time, she and her family saw their country change from Russian rule to Ukrainian control and then to Polish occupation, before they immigrated to Canada.

In 1988, when Gorbachev was the Russian ruler, Mom took our family back to Ukraine (at that time, Soviet Ukraine) to see her village. Memories of that trip also played a part in my historical and biographical family saga. Not much had changed. They still had an outdoor toilet with a hole in the ground.

Much of what my mother shared, she got from her mother, my baba, Lukia Mazurets. When I look back at my childhood and adolescence, I see my baba, this strong maternal figure, so loving, the one I ran to when mom spanked or scolded me. The one I took two buses with to go to Sunday’s Divine Liturgy at St. Mary the Protectress Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral in Winnipeg. We would sit in a front pew, and I would help her stand up from the kneeling bench. We shared a bed, and then later, a bedroom, and yet, despite all the time we had together, she never shared any of her memories.

After working as a therapist for many years, I understand now why people don’t share what they’ve gone through. While writing Sunflowers Under Fire, I became aware of the trauma my baba, my mother, and her siblings went through. They went through World War II, life in a refugee camp, the typhus epidemic, the Bolshevik revolution, the eldest girl in the family’s forbidden love, and other unimaginable losses. No wonder Baba didn’t share that pain. Like soldiers returning from war, she kept her painful experiences to herself. Who would want to relive them in the telling? But thanks to my mother, I heard those stories.

Once Sunflowers Under Fire was published, readers told me they wanted to know what happened next. So, I wrote two more stories about Lukia Mazurets and her family, and once again relied on memories—my mother’s, my father’s (I wrote down his stories as well while he was alive), and my cousin’s. I also relied on my memory to write about my uncles. I knew their personalities from the time I was a child and a teenager. They were adults with families of their own by then. But my work as a therapist allowed me to imagine what they were like as children, teens, and young adults.

These memories, combined with research and imagination, were woven into the sequels, Lilacs in the Dust Bowl, and Paper Roses on Stony Mountain. This time, I also used my cousin Jean Reid’s memories. She was my uncle Egnat’s eldest daughter. She was only a baby when she immigrated to Canada, but I was able to fold in her memories of her life on a farm in Manitoba for the third book in Lukia’s Family Saga, which takes place in the latter years of the great depression and the early years of World War II.

Memories in Along Came A Gardener

And then there’s my latest book, Along Came A Gardener, non-fiction, a self-help book and memoir, a complete departure from the rest, but one relying much on memory.

I had quite the journey as a clinical social worker, specializing in family therapy. I worked on a psychiatric ward at the Winnipeg General Hospital and in a Child Guidance Clinic in Winnipeg, on a community mental health team in Richmond, B.C., in the Cancer Clinic in Vancouver, at Interlock, a non-profit employee assistance counselling agency, and for Corporate Health Consultants, a for-profit employee assistance agency. I also had my own private practice in Vancouver.

Again I found myself folding memories into story. Memories of the people I helped and what I learned along the way are folded into this book along with my love of gardening. I found many lessons in nature that are worth absorbing.

Truth in the Telling

I’m currently reading another one of Anne Tyler’s novels. She’s a master of telling stories of family life, its strengths, challenges, loves, losses, and all manners of strife. I don’t know much of her background, but I’m sure she weaves in memories of what she has experienced, whether it’s what she’s lived through personally or what she’s witnessed or heard. If you haven’t read any of her works, I’d recommend Breathing Lessons, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Amateur Marriage, and The Beginner’s Goodbye.

My Short Story Collection

My short story collection, inspired by my memories of growing up in rooming houses, is still saved on my computer. I’m waiting to hear back from various publishers. Some of them take up to a year to let you know if they’re interested. If they’re not—luck plays such a big role in who gets published and who doesn’t—I’ll self-publish it myself. I’m waiting until fall to see if I get any bites.

Meanwhile

I’ve begun work on another novel. More news about this one will unfold when I’m further along.

Comments?

If you have any, I always love hearing from readers. It’s one of the biggest joys a writer has. Most of the time, we’re writing alone in our offices, at the kitchen table, or in some coffee shop. Hope your spring is going well, and you’re taking in nature in your part of the world.

My Newsletter

I’ve been on Substack for a while now. This post was sent out earlier this week to all my subscribers. Though it was similar, it’s where I post more book news and some thoughts that don’t make it here. So, would love to see you there. Subscribe to Hearts and Pages.