Memoir Writing 102: Make an Anachronistic Map of Your Childhood Home
To know where you're going, you have to know where you've been. We're going to make an anachronistic map of our childhood home(s). This means you're going to make one picture that will represent your home (if you have more than one, then you will pick the parts that meant the most to you from each one). So many parts of my childhood home are now different, so it's nice to remember what used to once be and I can revisit it at any time by looking at my map.
You're going to start with a mind map (one of the best memory gathering exercises out there). You can use an extra piece of paper or directly draw this in your journal (or get HUGE and use a piece of poster board). Write "Childhood Home(s)" in the middle and draw a circle around it. If you have more than one home, use a different color for each home. If you want to put more than just items in your home, then use different colors for each type of things (aka: memories, friends, games, items, etc.).
Then go from there. Keep writing out everything you can remember. You won't include everything in your map, but this will give you all sorts of ideas on what to use.
When you're done with your mind map, then you're going to draw out your house. I, myself, have only had one childhood home, so I didn't have an issue with the shape. But for those of you who've had several, you can either pick your favorite or make a combination of all of them. I also only had one floor. For those of you who had more than one (my kids grew up in a 3-floor house!), you can make more than one map or you can, again, combine into one.
Take your ruler and pencil and lightly sketch out the shape. I tried to make mine exact, but you can make yours as loosely related as you like. I then took my ruler and sectioned off all the rooms and erased and redrew until I got them to my liking. I added in all the stuff that I wanted to remember: the bushes outside, our huge maple tree out front, a compass with my friends' names on them to show where they lived in relation to my house, etc. I even put in all the windows. Many things did not exist together at the same time, but that's how I wanted to remember it (that's what makes it anachronistic). If you had bad experiences in certain places you can use this map to explore those things or you can use it change them to your liking.
The point of this exercise is to either remember the good times, what you loved about your childhood home (or the experiences you had there) or to revisit what you hated about it. If you really had horrible experiences, you can also choose to draw this on something burnable, like paper or a poster board instead of a journal. That way you can explore your anger and sadness as hard as you want to, and then get rid of it. I had bad experiences in mine, but I did this exercise to ignore those parts and remember all the fun I had as a kid (when I wasn't around my parents). It's completely up to you how you want this exercise to work for you.
When you're done with your mind map, then you're going to draw out your house. I, myself, have only had one childhood home, so I didn't have an issue with the shape. But for those of you who've had several, you can either pick your favorite or make a combination of all of them. I also only had one floor. For those of you who had more than one (my kids grew up in a 3-floor house!), you can make more than one map or you can, again, combine into one.
Take your ruler and pencil and lightly sketch out the shape. I tried to make mine exact, but you can make yours as loosely related as you like. I then took my ruler and sectioned off all the rooms and erased and redrew until I got them to my liking. I added in all the stuff that I wanted to remember: the bushes outside, our huge maple tree out front, a compass with my friends' names on them to show where they lived in relation to my house, etc. I even put in all the windows. Many things did not exist together at the same time, but that's how I wanted to remember it (that's what makes it anachronistic). If you had bad experiences in certain places you can use this map to explore those things or you can use it change them to your liking.
The point of this exercise is to either remember the good times, what you loved about your childhood home (or the experiences you had there) or to revisit what you hated about it. If you really had horrible experiences, you can also choose to draw this on something burnable, like paper or a poster board instead of a journal. That way you can explore your anger and sadness as hard as you want to, and then get rid of it. I had bad experiences in mine, but I did this exercise to ignore those parts and remember all the fun I had as a kid (when I wasn't around my parents). It's completely up to you how you want this exercise to work for you.
After you make the map, then journal about all the stuff that's on there. Tell the story about the house in front of you. And from that story, glean story ideas for you memoir.
You can do this exercise for your town, your neighborhood, workplaces, or anywhere you want to gather memories from. Also, feel free to include your map in your memoir!
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Memoir Writing 102
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