Crick Hollow Day 4

Memoir

What memories do the following images call up for you?

• A favorite pair of shoes
• Seeing a place for the first time
• Re-visiting a familiar place
• Someone’s hand
• Toes
• Dinner table
• Something you weren’t supposed to see

Choose one of these memories to write about. Then, consider the following uses of memoir writing:

• Create a memoir poem, repeating the opening phrase: “I remember . . . “
• Use your memory in a piece of fiction writing. How does it change when given to a character?
• Write a series of non-fiction memory pieces around a theme such as, “Letting go.”

Incident by Countee Cullen (1903-1946)

Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December:
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

Books of the day: Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary Schmidt
In Print! 40 Cool Publishing Projects for Kids by Joe RhatiganIncludes a great resource on places to publish your writing.

Website of the day:
http://www.potluckmagazine.org/

Potluck receives nearly 600 submissions each issue and our editors read and respond to each one. Those writers or artists not published, receive a personal letter along with a critique of their work that is constructive, instructive, and positive!