Get Started Right Writing Task: 003
Get each week started on the right foot with Get Started Right Writing Tasks. For this week’s task, mine your memories.
Before we get started: If you want a daily writing challenge for the month of February, be sure to check out Moriah Richard's February Flash Fiction Challenge here. I've done it a few times in the past, and it's a lot of fun.
For this week's Get Started Right Writing Task, mine your memories. Whenever I get stuck in my writing, I've found that digging around in my past is a great way to play around with new ideas. I may think of past moments with family or friends, or intimate moments with past flames. I try to remember sad moments, scary moments, funny moments, and so on. I find that once I start this process, I often remember things I previously forgot.
And I've found that these memories can be used in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. So this is a multi-genre practice, for sure.
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Here are some of my memories:
Maybe because today is Groundhog Day, I find myself remembering Groundhog Days of yore. You see, my little family unit often celebrates the holiday of the prognosticating marmot. In Georgia, that used to mean visiting the Yellow River Game Ranch in Lilburn but over the past few years has meant traveling down to Dauset Trails Nature Center in Jackson.
Either way, it requires an early wake up and departure time to get to our location as the park opens so that we can get a spot close to where General Beauregard Lee, the weather prognosticator of Georgia and the Southeast, will either see his shadow or not after being lured out by a plate of Waffle House hash browns. Because even in Georgia, it is usually a very cold affair requiring winter hats, coats, and gloves.
Sometimes the kids are excited; sometimes not so much; but it's a tradition that involves travelers from other states and even from other countries, along with local television crews and media. There's, of course, the prediction, but some of my memories are the things we do afterward, exploring nearby parks and trails or going on shopping expeditions. In fact, sometimes these side quests are what my wife and I use to lure the kids out of their winter holes (aka their bedrooms).
If I'm being honest, and I am, there are some years when one of more of the kids (and maybe a parent or two) has lost their cool, but it's also true that we talk fondly of the day at random times throughout the year. It's something we hold together as a family, and I've found that's no small thing to share. In fact, it's the sort of thing that (through the peaks and valleys of this thing called life) binds us together.
