The Part Impressions Play in Writing and Life: 11 Thoughts

July walk 2015

"Impression (n.)--1. an effect produced on a person; 2. an effect produced by any operation or activity; 3. an idea or notion; 4. something made by pressure such as a mark, stamp, or print; 5. the act of impressing; 6. the state of being impressed."

I did not realize there were so many shades to the meaning of the word impression until I consulted a dictionary. I simply thought of impressions as those memories of childhood printed on the brain--like these black-eyed susans I came upon while on my walk. They brought back to mind the field next to my childhood home--how they filled the lot on the north side of the house, hovered over by red-winged blackbirds. Mom's bachelor buttons were there somewhere, too. I remember them as being one of Mom's favorite flowers to plant.

in the park 2015

Other impressions came during a recent visit with Mom, now in a nursing home after suffering a stroke that left her with aphasia. Unable to communicate like before, she works hard at recalling stories. We sat on this park bench where she tried to tell me about an apartment she and Dad lived in when first married, 1946--how they had to share the facilities with other renters and how the kitchen left much to be desired. Though she struggled to express herself, it was obvious the place left quite the impression on her even after almost 70 years.

on the lake 2015

We also visited college friends up in northern Ohio, great hosts, always ready to show us a good time. We roasted marshmallows, visited museums, puttered around the lake in their boat. But what kept the conversation and laughter going were the "remember whens" and "whatever happened to" impressions of those days of our youth. If you could have been a fly on the wall (or maybe one of the mosquitoes around the campfire the first night)...!

an impression of original blue coat

Then there was the email I got a few weeks ago--a message from a childhood playmate I only knew in first and second grade. Somehow he found me. His email said, "Are you the same person in whose blue coat pocket we put what turned out to be a live coal from the campfire, subsequently burning a hole in the pocket?" I responded, "Oh, my, this is too funny. Yes, you have the right person--who else would remember that blue coat, one which, by the way, I hated. Mom bought matching coats for my sister and me, and since I was the younger one, I got her hand-me-down. I wore a version of that coat for years!" Can you believe it--sixty years later and here we are. We are still exchanging memories, one impression triggering another. It's been a lot of fun.

All this led me to ask the question, if impressions play such a huge part in our lives, what role do they play in our writing? What gems of wisdom can help steer us down this road? A sampling of what I found:

1. The Query. "Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write." --Nicholas Sparks

2. Story Endings. "How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell." --S.E. Hinton

3. Influential Books. "Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books--for kids--because they're still open to new ideas." --Gary Paulsen

4. Place. "A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It's like your childhood. It fertilizes the imagination." --Richard Eyre

5. Language. "I grew up in a house where language was appreciated and cared about. I'm sure that, although I wasn't aware of it at the time, it must have made an impression on me." --Marian Seldes

6. Inspiration. "The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience--anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form." -Carol Ann Duffy

7. Names. "A name, of course, is like a piece of clothing, isn't it? It gives you an impression right away." --James Salter

8. Relationships. "I grew up with an incredibly loving and supporting family that gave me the impression there were a lot of options for me out there." --Esperanza Spalding

9. Note-Taking. "I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember--to keep close somehow--moments that made an impression on me. --Anne Michaels

10. Grammar. "Your grammar is a reflection of your image. Good or bad, you have made an impression. And like all impressions, you are in total control." --Jeffrey Gitomer

11. Childhood Memories. "Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years."--Charlotte Bronte

Impressions. They play a huge part in our lives which in turn play a part in our writing. What are some of your strongest childhood impressions? And how have they surfaced in your writing?

p.s. What about "first impressions"? Do you remember the story of Susan Boyle's first audition in Britain's Got Talent 2009? Watch it here for a refresher course in being careful not to form opinions based on those first impressions!

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Stairs and Thoughts and Other Things

art courtesy of google.com/images

Halfway Down

                                                            Halfway down the stairs
                                                            Is a stair
                                                            Where I sit.
                                                            There isn't any
                                                            Other stair
                                                            Quite like
                                                            It.
                                                            I'm not at the bottom,
                                                            I'm not at the top;
                                                            So this is the stair
                                                            Where
                                                            I always
                                                            Stop.

                                                            Halfway up the stairs
                                                            Isn't up,
                                                            And it isn't down.
                                                            It isn't in the nursery,
                                                            It isn't in the town.
                                                            And all sorts of funny thoughts
                                                            Run round my head:
                                                            "It isn't really
                                                            Anywhere!
                                                            It's somewhere else
                                                            Instead!" --A.A. Milne

My thoughts have turned to the stairs lately. I don't know if it's because this time of year tends to wax nostalgic or what. Memories take me to childhood traditions, family experiences, life changes and life blessings. Staircases can do that, I guess, since they play a key part in some of those memories. The curving staircase of my great-aunt's farmhouse where we had family reunions. The staircase of my youth at the bottom of which I'd sit and talk on the telephone as a teenager. The staircase even years before that at the top of which, when I was three years old, I attempted to throw a telephone book down--and bumped all the way down myself along with it. The staircase that has carried my children's footsteps up and down and now my grandkids pattering feet as well.

The steps to the upstairs of our house have seen many feet. Big feet, little feet. Old feet, young feet. Happy feet, stomping feet. Ours is an aged country house (though the country around it now isn't so much country anymore), built in 1935. Steep and narrow, the steps ascend at the back of the house behind the kitchen. Awkward placement, it would seem, but that's how old Mr. Meyer built it for his bride-to-be all those years ago. I know this because of the day when I was a young mother and a strange car pulled into the driveway. Out emerged an elderly man accompanied by a younger driver. In the backseat were two women, their respective wives it turned out. Upon answering the knock at the back door, I heard the younger man say, "I have someone here you might like to meet." At which the elderly gentleman said, "I am Leo Meyer, and I built this house."

What a treasure. Questions about my house that I'd pondered could be posed and answered. Hands that dug the basement, erected the walls--and fashioned the steps--gestured over things that had changed, things that remained the same. The sweet wife, now wizened but once a beaming bride, who toured what was once her home and who whispered, "If you find any money, it's mine."

A few years later, I learned that we were only the fifth owners of this house--and the two families that followed the Meyers before we came along each had a set of twins. Twins, in this house, times two! One couple with twin girls. The other with a girl and a boy. Imagine the antics up and down the steps in those years. Then came the couple that sold the house to us. The years march by just like the many times feet have marched up and down the stairs.

And I wonder, did any of the children in those years sit in the middle of the stairs and just 'be'--listening and imagining and pretending? How did the stairs help form their view of life and give them a boost up to their futures? Roald Dahl once commented, "I do have a blurred memory of sitting on the stairs and trying over and over again to tie one of my shoelaces..." What are the memories of the children who traipsed these stairs?

What are the memories of children who've traveled your stairs? What are your memories of stairs? And aren't words like steps--links to places, connections from past to present and future, a starting place and a help to a destination? Steps--and words--support, launch, propel, nurture, serve and lift. And on occasion give our imaginations a place to pause and be reignited.

Here's to that special stair that can do all those things!

May your holiday celebrations be blessed this year with much joy and peace--and with those quiet moments that help you reflect and recharge. Happy wishes to all.

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Photo-A-Day: June

"The principles of true art are not to portray, but to evoke." --Jerzy Kosinski

I don't know about you but June came and went so fast, I'm still trying to process it all. Faces and places and  time all whizzed by. Thankfully another month of a photo each day helped record some of the highlights.

There were the special family visits and gatherings of course. And then, toward the end of the month came a different kind of highlight.You see, hubby and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary June 24. To mark the milestone, we retraced our steps to where we first met--and took a trip to Chicago.

Back all those many years ago we were college students and, coming separately from our respective schools, we had headed to Chicago for an education convention. Hubby traveled by bus, I arrived in a carpool of other students. We "bumped" into each other that first night and the rest, as they say is history. Some of the highlights of those days included walks in Grant Park, a play at the Blackstone Theater, and a subway ride to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game.

Well, we thought, what better way to celebrate our 40th than to re-enact some of those things? That's how we found ourselves on a bus (we're such sentimentalists) one day last week. Once in Chicago, we stayed in a hotel next to the old Blackstone Theater (now the site of a college), walked through the lobby of the hotel where we met, meandered through Grant Park, and once more rode the subway to Wrigley Field and took in a Cubs game, sitting in the same section and eating Cracker Jacks just like we did all those years ago. Which, looking back, doesn't seem so long ago after all. Those just starting out cannot comprehend just how fast those years do go by. Believe me.

We also went to Chicago's Institute of Art and to Millennium Park. We marveled at what we remembered and laughed at our confusion over how things had changed. It was a memorable trip--short but packed full of experiences and maybe just a couple of blisters (we did a monumental amount of walking). And that's another thing, the way architecture, patterns, colors and designs caught my eye. I credit that to the practice of taking a photo-a-day all these months.


Emotions worked their way into the experience, too--often swinging up and down in joyful, nostalgic, surprised, anticipatory, anxious, appreciative, reflective moods. Made me, as a writer, want to capture it all. Yep, I filled my writer's bag (or journal as the case may be) with images and ideas, characters and settings, sensory and structural details. Faces emoting, places evoking. The month of June gave me lots of material. Have a peek...

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Mulberry Memories

"What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense, to fear no longer the terror that flieth by night, yet to feel truly and understand a little, a very little, the story of life." --Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit

We went on our walk together this morning, hubby and I, something we try to do on Saturday mornings as a different routine than the normal weekly things. And lo and behold, we discovered that the mulberries are ripe.

The mulberry tree edges the road about a mile up the way. If you, like me, tend to keep your head down when you're walking (hubby always admonishes: "Get your head up! Look around. Don't watch your feet...") then the first sign of evidence are the purple splotches on the asphalt. But when we checked out the tree's branches, we marveled at the rich lode of berries growing there.

And the memories kicked in. I'm a child, along with a couple of neighbor kids, and we have crossed the road where it curves around the bend, skipped up the lane, and climbed the gnarled branches of the neighborhood mulberry tree. The owner doesn't care. We nestle in the crook of its branches, and stretch as far as we can to reach the plumpest, juiciest berries. The sun warms our arms. The breeze ruffles the leaves and cools our faces. We eat until we're full. It's one of my favorite summer memories.

For hubby, his memory bank kicked in as we passed a cluster of first-of-the-season daisies. "The end of the school year" flower, he says, the name he gave the daisy as a kid. He'd notice fields of daisies growing along the bus route those last few school days and know that school was just about over. Then he'd be free. Free to play ball--even if it meant just himself, with a rock and a stick and an imagination back on the hill behind the house. There he'd throw the rock up, hit it as far as he could--and pretend that the rustling leaves were his adoring fans cheering him on.

Oh, the childhood memories!

Recently, in our newspaper, columnist Paul Daugherty wrote a column about summertime ("How Summer Is Supposed to Be Spent"). In it he recalled how, as a child, his parents (who both worked) would leave a quarter on the bureau in the living room for him, and a handwritten reminder: "Have a good day and don't break anything." Armed with that 25-cents, "a bike and two good friends," he writes that he'd "throw myself at the day." He writes of being Roberto Clemente one day, Steve McQueen another, of sneaking into the tennis club pool or visiting the local pet store. He says, "Some days, we were bored. Kids need to be bored. Boredom is good."

He makes a good point as he continues: "The essential part of childhood is...being a child. Plan nothing. Risk. Extend...Loll. Dare. Engage. Run, jump, be fearless, look silly. The magic is in the day. Seize it. Find your own quarter on the bureau in the living room. One summer to a customer. This one's yours. Play."

I love his philosophy and think that we could use a bit of it in our adult lives, too. Especially those of us who write for children--as we explore such intangibles as imagination, creativity, wonder and the craft of words. What do you think? What's one of your favorite childhood summer memories--and how can you incorporate a touch of the child you were into the adult you've become?