This is an exercise I’d recommend to anyone wanting to start life writing, of some sort or another.
Autobiography, memoir, autofiction or oh look I’ve accidentally started a novel.
It’s based on Joe Brainard’s book I Remember (1970), and couldn’t be simpler, or more freeing.
For his delightful memoir, the American artist Joe Brainard invented a form in which each and every sentence begins I remember and continues with whatever he happens to think of next and is followed by a line gap before the next I remember —
I remember a boy who could swig down a Coke in one big gulp followed by a long belch.
I remember, just outside the city limits, fire-cracker booths.
I remember (basketball) total frustration over how to “dribble”.
I remember finding it very mysterious that ballet dancers didn’t break their toes off, doing what they do that way.
That’s it.
My advice is for you to begin by trying to remember a very limited period or preoccupation of your life.
For example, the journey to and from school, or your memories of trees, birds or mobile phones.
Of course, you could start with your mother or your love affairs, or your mother and your love affairs, but I’d save that for when you’ve started to flow.
As a fun elaboration of Joe Brainard’s form, I came up with a version for writing about events that haven’t happened yet.
In 2003, I joined Sinéad Morrissey, Susan Elderkin and Romesh Gunesekera for an epic British Council project called The Writers’ Train. We travelled all around China by train — accompanied by four Chinese writers, Ye Yanbing, Chen Danyan, Zhang Mei and Zhang Zhe. The photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert came, too.
We travelled to six cities, in a great arc, starting in Shanghai and finishing in Hong Kong.
With a delay caused by bird flu, I had over a year to anticipate what I might see and experience.
And so, having learned of Joe Brainard’s book, I began a list of I expects on the subject of China —
I expect speeches of humorous welcome.
I expect to spend much of my time absurdly worrying about whether I have committed some gross social faux-pas which those around me are too polite even to acknowledge among themselves in private afterwards.
I expect not to go anywhere that Westerners are particularly much of a novelty.
I expect expectoration – sniffling, sniffing, hawking, spitting, gobbing.
I expect very few NO SMOKING environments.
When I returned to England, I balanced this (not looking back at my I expects) with a set of I remembers…
I remember the first wish to stay in China forever and the first pulse of homesickness.
I remember feeling nauseous with the number of new memories I had acquired.
I remember not being able to write fast enough to record all the things that had happened or were happening.
I remember not wanting to take photographs because I felt my job was to turn my experience into memorable words.
If you know you are heading toward a major life event, I suggest you give this two-part exercise a go.
Record all your anticipations and preconceptions as minutely as you can, then see afterwards how the outspooling of experience matched or outdid them.
There isn’t space here, so tomorrow I’ll post the whole of my What I Expected and What I Remember of China.
You could even, in the comments, write an I expect of what you expect I wrote.