Full disclosure: I didn’t know what this month’s newsletter would be about. I was toying with a few different ideas, but nothing that stuck – nothing that would help any of you learn how to better approach an essay. Then my niece, Cassidy, sent me some pictures. She’s in Boston. And it all clicked.
If you’ve taken my class, you’ve probably heard me ask you to “set the stage” – show us where you are in the story. The best stories unfold when the reader feels like he/she is in the scene with you, experiencing what’s happening as you do.
When it’s done well, place almost becomes another character in your piece. It plays a starring role in your story. Weather can set the mood. Locals can add an element of tone, showing us whether you fit in with your environment. And the surroundings can act as a contrast or complement to what you’re experiencing in that moment.
So, in essence, place grounds your reader. It gives them a visual for your personal experience. Equally important, putting yourself physically in that place can take you back to a different time, particularly when the place has remained largely the same but YOU have changed.
Back to Boston. I went to graduate school there in the late 1990s when I was in my early 20s. It was the beginning of me figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be. Of course, while I was there, I was also diagnosed with a rare tumor and had major surgery. When Cassidy sent me a picture of the street where I lived, emotion overwhelmed me. I had to FaceTime her. I had to be in that space at that moment. And when we hung up, I dissolved into tears, my three boys sitting on the couch beside me.
I remembered my sister, Shannon, and I sitting in my hospital room on Thanksgiving Day in 1998 waiting for my dad. He ran through Boston Common to New England Medical Center in the rain with the Thanksgiving dinner he whipped up in my Holly Hobby-sized apartment. My feast that night was green Jello, but dad and Shannon ate turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes.
I remembered him sitting down with my graduate school professor and asking him what my diagnosis really meant – and how it differed from the Mickey Mouse version I had painted for him and my mother. I remembered eating blueberry pancakes with him in a local diner (okay, I had blueberry pancakes; he had corned beef and hash). I asked him about his younger, wilder days when he was a college student at Bowdoin in Maine. I remembered him taking me to the airport, putting me into a wheelchair and telling me my mom would pick me up at the gate when I landed in California. He was staying behind to pack up my apartment on his own and ship everything home.
Though he died more than a year ago, the pictures Cassidy sent helped me FEEL him again. It helped me connect with my younger self and my younger sister, too (who is a chronologically older sister). Shannon and I climbed the FAO Schwartz bear, boarded a “Duck Tour” that rode through the streets of Boston and floated in the Charles River and hit Cheers for potato skins both before my surgery and again several days post-surgery before she left to go back to California.
That is the power of place. It can make you feel all the feels. It can trigger emotions both good and bad. If you can physically go back to a place – not just with pictures, but in reality – it can trigger the memories that help you write from the heart.
Yes, it hurts. Yes, it’s difficult. But when you’re writing an essay, getting in touch with emotions is critical. I don’t just mean getting in touch with them, but really feeling them! Some writers read through old journals. Some look at pictures. Others play music. All of these approaches work – and I’ll likely detail each one in future newsletters.
For now, I’ll leave you with this: Write a few graphs about an experience where a place plays a starring role and send it to me for your chance to win a spot in my alumni workshop or a half-hour of one-on-one coaching. And yes, you can “gift” your winning prize to a loved one or friend.
Want to do a deeper dive into essay writing? My alumni class begins July 8. Email me at amy@amypaturel.com if you would like to join us! It’s shaping up to be a great group.
Happy writing …
a