It was as though I’d stepped out of a time machine. Fresh off an airplane, three thousand miles from the place I now call home, I was staying in my childhood room in California, the room where I spent my high school years. The décor is a little different, but the flowered curtains I made are still hanging, the dresser in the corner is the one my parents bought me when I was twelve, and the pink carpeting’s the same, too.
This was the first time in a long time I visited without my kids. Maybe that’s why my childhood feelings started flooding back the second I arrived or maybe it’s because the novel I’m currently revising is based on a tiny seed of an idea from my childhood. Something that happened. Someone important to me who died much too young.
Driving up to my dad’s house, I was struck by the late afternoon light, how it fell across the driveway. I thought of a scene in my book when the main character is sitting in the car with golden light settling on Sycamore trees. I saw the scene out the car window, but more, I felt the frustration of the sixteen-year-old girl that I’d been, being in a place I didn’t want to be. Wanting to move on, wanting to be on my own.
Transported Back
The whole time I’ve been revising this story—even while I was writing, really—something’s been missing. Holding me back. It took the trip home—back in time, in place, and in feeling—to jog loose the memories. Not specific memories of places or people or things (although that happened, too), but memories of feelings, of emotions, of thought, and of ways of thinking. In short I was transported back to my sixteen-year-old frame of mind.
Late at night, I walked across the college campus (I grew up in a college town), walking past a spot in my book where the MC fights with a young man. He kicks a trashcan. I could imagine the kicking of the can. The scattering of trash, but more…as I watched students walk by, I felt the coiled, youthful energy around me.
Walking through a eucalyptus tree grove near the edge of campus, the smell of the dust and the distinctive oil from the trees mixing in such a familiar way, I could feel a teenage restlessness, an excitement and desire, stir within me. A time in life it was impossible to turn off the feelings.
The next day my father had organized a brunch—eight of his friends, all who had known me since I was a child. As I sat at the table, I was once again the youngest. I was transported into myself as a small child, that small child who always lives in my mind somewhere, but who is usually tucked away. That morning she was right at the surface. I felt the feeling of being under scrutiny by grownups, of fearing I’d say “the wrong thing,” a cold sweat breaking across my face. And I could feel a youthful frustration and competition rise within me when one of the elderly women leaned across the table to ask me, “Are you a writer like your brother?”
A few days later, I drove to a more rural part of California. Horses and cows grazed on dusty hillsides, and when I stopped the car and walked up to the corral, the horses leaned over the fence to greet me. The smell of the horses, the dust mixed in, reminded me of the riding lessons I’d taken as a child—a feeling at the heart of my story rose up within me. The desire to ride fast and hard into the canyon.
Going After Emotion
Encouraged, I took it one step further. I took a trip up the California coast to Santa Cruz, the town where I met my husband. I went to the Harbor Café for breakfast—a place where over twenty years ago—we’d go to talk over our plans for the future. I watched the young people waiting tables—about the same age I was the last time I was there—hustling and rushing and laughing together: high enthusiasm. The feeling of youth, of life just getting going coursed through me.
I stumbled on a way to make feelings available to me, and this accidental gift made me realize that by seeking out familiar things—even my oldest emotions—I can evoke fresh feelings to pass along to my readers, enhancing the depth of my story. Instead of simply describing the heat of the sun on a southern California day, the way a horse looks as it runs, the scent of orange blossoms at midnight, or driving on a dark road to a dance…I’ll push myself further. I want to evoke in the reader the same feelings and emotions I remember feeling last week—while revisiting my sixteen-year-old self—the overwhelming giddiness of first love, the fury of love scorned, the joy of a dip in the road taken at high speed, and the thrill of a flat gallop on horseback.
Clearly we can’t all go home again as we write our novels. Sometimes, in fact, there is no home or place that we can relate personally to a story we’re writing. But what I learned from this trip was not that I can recall specific memories to use in my novel (I have lots of those), but that I can evoke feelings and emotions that I barely remember I have. Because while it’s true that everything we write might not be about places we’ve actually been or people we’ve even known, every story is about feelings, and in order for readers to feel our emotion—for us to evoke that emotion—we need to get in touch with feelings that may have been tucked away long ago.
Have you ever connected with long buried feelings and emotions when you least expected it? How do you get in touch with and evoke feelings in your writing?
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About Julia Munroe Martin
Julia Munroe Martin (@jmunroemartin) is a writer and blogger who lives in an old house in southern coastal Maine. Julia's other passion is photography, and if she's not writing at the dining room table or a local coffeeshop, you'll likely find her on the beach or dock taking photos. Julia writes The Empty Nest Can Be Murder mystery series as J. M. Maison.
Hi Julia. Your post makes me want to read your novel. I am a Process Psychologist and published author and work deeply with feelings every day for over 30 years now. Real connection with ourselves and others comes from our heart and emotions. Thank you for writing about your fabulous feelings.
What a great comment to start out my day, Sherry! Thank you so much for your kind words…here’s hoping you’ll get a chance to read that novel someday.
I wish I could do as you did, and go on an actual trip. When I go home to Mexico, the emotions are churned up because the trips are rare and there is so much buried in the place where I spent the years from 7 to 19.
But I also have the problem that I physically can’t afford much emotion – the chemical aftermath of allowing emotion can wipe me out for days. On a trip it keeps coming; at home in the States, writing, I can take the adrenaline in smaller doses with much rest in between, and that makes it manageable.
When I get stuck and can’t seem to finish a scene, it always turns out to be that I haven’t dug deeply enough into the emotions the scene is meant to evoke.
‘Meant’ seems to be something my subconscious has decided, and hasn’t yet informed me of, but was there when the scene was conceived. And I can’t write the scene or move on until the emotions are honored.
It is a curious process; it doesn’t happen until the events of the scene are all scoped out – the plot and its twists and what happens and who says what to whom – those are the basics of the story. The effect on the reader? That has to be created out of what the maximum effect is on me as the writer.
I used to wonder what the heck was happening, why I couldn’t finish something when I knew where it was going and what had to occur, but now I look forward to turning myself inside out – because that is the end of the process and then I will be able to finish the writing.
I love the way you describe your process, Alicia!
I know what you mean about emotions being churned up and the aftermath of those emotions, there is definitely a toll to the refeeling and remembering. Thank you for sharing your process; I can really relate to this (especially after my recent trip): “…now I look forward to turning myself inside out – because that is the end of the process and then I will be able to finish the writing.”
It’s what is demanded of writers; not all respond. I have no filters. I have to.
We recently moved my Mom out of her house of 40 years, and ended up going through a ton of old photos. Looking at them brought back so many memories and not a few jolts of ‘aha’. The six year old me and the teenaged me hold the keys to the stories I want to tell. Thank you for this beautiful reminder, Julia!
I can well imagine those photos bringing back memories. I didn’t have the chance to delve into any of my dad’s old things — but I imagine they too might have given me stories to remember. That’s a great idea, Susan!
Wow! Didn’t you record your feeling experience in great detail?
It’s definitely possible, but I don’t believe I have any buried feelings, shelved maybe, but not buried. I revisit past feelings quite often, for various reasons like, parenting, writing, developing, relating and connecting to others, etc… I evoke these feelings and emotions through association, mainly traumatic past experiences. There are a few not so traumatic associations too, though. Normally, if the experience is outside of routine I can recall it pretty easy and connect an emotion to it.
I actually did take lots of notes in the notebook I never leave home without. That’s great that you can recall experiences and feelings so easily — I wish I could. What was interesting to me was that although I remembered feeling the feelings, it was when I was in those places, smelling those smells, and seeing certain things, it was as though I was in that place in time. Quite different than anything I’d experienced before.
Yeah, one of these days I will hire a professional editor.
“Wow! Didn’t you record your feeling experience in great detail?”
should have been
“Wow! Did you record your feeling experience in great detail?”
Great post, Julia.
Am in the midst of a bit different (but similar outcome) time machine experience…sorting and cleaning out a number of boxes of accumulated stuff, some from years ago. Ran across two ancient letters–one from my father and one from my mother–both filled with blunt expressions of what it means to be a responsible young adult. (I was barely twenty at the time.)
Talk about feelings! Brought all my adolescent angst, doubts, and insecurities to the surface in one fell swoop. Ouch. The good news is I could process them in a healthy manner–and now use them in way that will give meaningful life to my WIP.
Appreciate your insights. And, as always, your beautiful photos.
Those letters! Can you believe that a few years ago I had a similar experience, coming across a letter written to me by my mother while I was in college. So I can certainly imagine the angst, doubts, and insecurities that welled up. So you understand exactly what I mean about the reaction and the ability to use them. Thank you so much for your kind words, Micky. Always appreciated!
You’re going to hate this.
But my emotions surged in a completely different way as I read your article. Don’t get me wrong. The opportunity to drift back down home for a time is always a good time to remember. Because down home is where I started the journey to where I am today.
Except today, down home is the in the center of a hurly-burly urban area. Sirens, police pursuits, the disturbances of a late-night topless bar, the presence of a hospital, take away the summer morning memories of my youth, when doves cooed in the trees, and I slept until 10 o’clock, awakening to a quiet, empty house. My parents worked, so I was on my own to eat, visit friends, play baseball, make popcorn, watch television. My only obligation was to practice the piano for two hours. So I did. One hour in the late morning, one in the afternoon. When my parents came home, there were the possibilities of evening movies, baseball and softball games, or visiting other families.
But in the past few years, I have started a series of novels, the first of which has been accepted by a publisher, the second of which became in progress when he took away my winter vacation, urging me to get going on books two and three of the series because he wants to submit them to movie producers.
But here’s the thing: the series is about a young former active U.S. Marine MP. In the first story, she leaves the Marines to come home to search for the now-missing son of her and her twin sister’s very good friend, who once performed with them in the summer stage shows at Disneyland. The friend was outrightly murdered–perhaps by the same serial killer who now has the small Oklahoma town of her youth frightened. The now-inactive Marine discovers that a paranormal event may have occurred instead of a serial killer murder, and the child may have been taken away by a . . . (Sorry. My publisher won’t let me say yet.)
But in pursuing the series idea, I have settled into learning that frightening occurrences everywhere. There ARE terrifying things that happen beyond (and sometimes within) the treelines that separate our communities from “the country.” Countless people disappear. (I’m not making this up.) Strange, cryptid creatures have been known, some say, to march with bold, unfrightened steps, down the streets and terrifying townfolk. Hunters, trappers, skiers, and others are chased by creatures that stay just out of their line of sight.
These things are not all happening over in New Mexico or northeast Arizona, where many frightening things happen. In fact, in the matter of disappearances, I have asked my sons and grandchildren to not take our grandchildren and great-grandchildren out into areas where a number of people have disappeared. (You can read about these in the Missing 411 book series, available at canammissing.com. Don’t buy the books from Amazon, as those sold there are sold by re-sellers who are tacking on huge margines.)
And if the notion of large numbers of disappearances don’t frighten you, then you should know what’s going on in the wild green-strewn or desert areas just out there. In fact, it is alarming enough that one of our local news anchors has stated she no longer takes her family out to camp.
Alas, the consequence of living in 21st Century America is that our society and countrysides are being invaded by phenomenon that have existed here in our nation for a very long time. (The rock and petroglyph representations by now-unknown American Indian recordskeepers and artists seem to show the same things we are seeing today.)
So these days, down home may be a lot scarier than we knew or remember.
I’m sorry to have to bring these things to your attention. But I thought I should.
So be careful. Very careful. There IS another side to going home.
Have you read Bone Gap by Laura Ruby? It’s fabulous and touches on this. It’s a thriller and a love story and about how people see each other.
Your books sounds fascinating — and I’ll definitely take a look at the website. I appreciate the comment. Just as when traveling home, you just never know where a blog post will take you, and the journey and new knowledge is always interesting. Thanks for the comment, Jim!
Hi Julia. Thanks for taking us with you so effectively.
In my current WIP, my main character is struggling to come to terms with recent, very ugly experiences that obscure everything that came before. I believe this is a simple reality: some of us have a much greater challenge before us, in terms of how the past is viewed, and how it shapes our expectations for the future.
As for home and origin, mine remains pretty much intact. But my wife’s childhood home and neighborhood have undergone a sordid version of what Jim Porter describes. The house in which she grew up is missing its front door. The siding’s been stripped for whatever siding brings these days per pound, and no one with a choice is going to walk down her street at night.
Happy memories are much easier to maintain as happy, when you can return to the actual place, and find it pretty much as you remember it.
Lucky you.
“Happy memories are much easier to maintain as happy, when you can return to the actual place, and find it pretty much as you remember it.” This is very true. Not only finding places pretty much the same but actually being able to visit in safety. There were parts of my trip that the places looked very different, but at least I felt comfortable going to them. That would alter an experience (and possibly the story that ensued). Thank you for your comment, glad you enjoyed!
There’s a book called Getting Into Character by Brandilyn Collins in which the author describes a process for awakening emotional memories by diving deep into mundane activities. She illustrates it by describing the thoughts and emotional escalation that comes from being shut in a room with a buzzing fly, where we might begin with amusement or mild irritation and, given sufficient time, end with murderous rage. The exercise is amusing and illuminating and reassuring that by being full present, we can access most of our characters’ emotional states.
PS: Your trip sounds like a lovely homecoming. Delighted it was also helpful to your writing.
Jan, I am going to read that book. I have a book that is, an actors manual on my writing shelf. It is an edition (one of the many) of Acting Is Believing. I also find both technique and method acting concepts help my writing tremendously. Acting is all about POV and so is story.
That book sounds great, Jan, and I’ll definitely check it out. It sounds really fascinating. I wonder if my “buzzing fly” was being in such a familiar-yet-new-again surrounding…requiring me to be fully present and helping me to dive deep. Really fascinating, and I love that there are exercises that can help me do this. Thanks for the comment!
Whether the trip “back home” stimulates lovely thoughts or sad ones it is all part of the human writing process. We store experience along with smells and sights and feelings that sometimes are very hard to transfer to the page. The joy of getting back something we experienced long ago is palpable and when it can come to your page, how wonderful.
That’s exactly how I felt, Beth! It was wonderful to experience the full range of emotions (not all were happy or joyful, it’s true), and I will fervently try to translate those to the page. Thank you for your comment!
Lovely post, Julia! Thanks for the memories.
So glad you enjoyed it, Bernadette!
Real emotion — the rush of youth, the twinge of nostalgia, the stab of loss. If you can find those core emotions and impart them into your stories, readers will find and touch them in themselves. I think that’s one of the most powerful gifts of storytelling in any form.
It seems you’re in a good vein, and wise to remain there as you finish and refine your latest work.
Your recollections remind me of a similar visit I had home, on my own, for an extended stay once. Inside, I was thirteen all over again after the third or fourth day, and for the remainder of the trip that sense stayed with me. It was uncomfortable but necessary, I think, allowing me to resolve some long lingering emotional blocks.
As for the writing, I do know in my first novel I pulled deep from my own childhood for my protagonist, though I was quick to point out the distinctions when discussing with those readers who “knew me when.” The character was not me, I’d insist; but some of the pain … yeah, it came from my past, more so than I could admit at the time (which is fine).
One of the reasons my current writing is perking up after a period of malaise is because I’ve recently been more willing to go back to that place — not for the entirety of the story, but for the emotion. I believe if you’re edging into the uncomfortable stuff, you’re closer to the truth.
I think you’re there, and find your willingness to share it here, without the veneer of a story, inspiring. Good job, Julia. Thank you for this.
Thank you, John — for your kind words and for sharing your own story — and I really understand what you mean about being willing to go back to that place. It wasn’t always the easiest memories or feelings (when I was at home), but “edging into uncomfortable stuff” is certainly a signal that I’m close. In addition to the feelings surfacing, I found myself rather emotionally prickly the entire time I was home, quick to anger and tears… yes, much closer to the truth of where I can start to reach those feelings. Thanks, John!
Julia, yes. While writing my first novel, about a mother of two young boys, I was a mother of two young-ish boys myself, living in the same area the novel was set. I could instantly access the emotional space of my protagonist. Now, consciously a stretch, I’m working on a novel with teenage girls at the heart of the story, in a city I have visited but never lived in. Since I live in the town where I was a teenager, visual cues have been written over by adult life. Your post prompted me to think of different ways to connect to those old emotions…maybe it’s time to unearth my teenage journals! That will at least make for a comical hour or two!
The teenage journals would be a great way — and I’ll be curious to see what you think, if they worked! I almost mentioned in this post that I did keep journals all through middle and high school but I disposed of them when I became a mom. It wasn’t so much the embarrassment (although I was embarrassed) as much as concerned what my kids might think of me… or maybe I’m not sure why exactly. Happy reading! And please do report back in about how they make you feel! Thanks for the comment, Laura!
This SO made me want to visit my childhood home. As my father is gone and my mother is now in care, I’m not sure how to do that…but I could. Thanks for the inspiration.
I hope you get that chance to visit. I didn’t mention in my post, but my mother has been gone for about ten years…and it definitely brings feelings to the surface much more easily. Along with that, I sense of loss lingers, bringing all feelings more easily. Maybe if you can’t get to the actual house, just the vicinity, surroundings — for me that was just as powerful. Thank you for your comment!
Thank you for another timely (and beautiful) post. Nostalgia seems to be in the air these days. (Maybe it’s all this writing?)
In October, nostalgia sent me on a little road trip through Wyoming, visiting the places where I spent my childhood summers, places I hadn’t seen since 1967. I found I was just as amazed by how accurately I remembered some things as by how much I mis-remembered or had forgotten completely. But it was the feelings those memories evoked that caught me off-guard. It’s one thing to remember a feeling but quite another to actually experience it again. Even though, for me, these experiences were (are) fleeting, only a few seconds, their power is like turning on a searchlight, and for those few seconds everything from that particular time, place, and event is real again. The trick, of course, is trying to recreate those few seconds in words.
“It’s one thing to remember a feeling but quite another to actually experience it again” — Yes, this.
When the memory is so sharp you feel it again, that is powerful. And while I agree it may be difficult to put into words, something about being in that space can draw words to the surface too, offering an askew yet perhaps deeper perspective. In those moments you realize little things can evoke a flood of emotions. Perhaps it’s not so much the event you’re capturing as it is the aftershock, in the case of pain, or buoyancy, in the case of joy — all those small details of a moment that crystallize deep inside your consciousness.
I love how you describe this… “It’s one thing to remember a feeling but quite another to actually experience it again.” Exactly what I experienced. And yes, it truly is like turning on a searchlight and having everything feel real again. Your trip “back in time” sounds quite amazing. Thank you for your kind words, I’m so very glad you enjoyed the post!
Great post, Julia. I know the feeling, of having the feelings surge back. I often experience it, like you, when I revisit places where I spent time in my life from the past. The minute I drive onto the main street in Piqua, my old small hometown, I am deluged. I can almost taste and smell it. It is a little unsettling to me, to be honest. Keep writing.
“I can almost taste and smell it. It is a little unsettling…” EXACTLY!!! I’m glad you can relate! There were moments on my trip that I did feel unsettled when I was so plunged into feeling those adolescent feelings. Fascinating we can do that, isn’t it? Thanks for the comment, Christine.
Julia, thanks for this post. I’m so glad you had a chance to visit your childhood home and recapture the emotions. I am too far from home, haven’t visited in 20 yrs, but it’s amazing how the little things, the smell of a jasmine, the spray of an orange rind, the prickly feeling when seeing a beetle crawl across my foot, can flood my consciousness of the terrible and wonderful things I’ve experienced, and with the same wonder. I suppose this is why I love writing for kids. At heart, I vacillate between a 5-yr-old and a 15-yr-old.
Your descriptions are wonderful, Vijaya. And it’s ture for me, too, that feeling and seeing certain things can really bring so much flooding back. Interesting, I never made the connection between experiencing that wonder and the interest in writing about young characters. A friend recently asked me why all my protagonists (even when I write adult books) are no older than 19. I think you may have helped me unlock the secret! The strength in emotion and sense of wonder may be what draw me in to that consciousness. Great comment, thank you. I hope you have that chance to go home…
I loved your distinction between “memories of places or people or things” and “memories of feelings, of emotions, of thought, and of ways of thinking.” I think that memories of feelings, etc. are so strong because we feel them again. They’re usually not just thoughts we have about those feelings, but the actual feeling rises in us, even if for a moment. That’s what reading a great novel is all about, and I’m sure your novel will invite the reader to reconnect with those emotions.
Great post, Julia!
Yes, the reconnection with the emotions and the “actual feeling rising” is exactly what I captured on this trip. It was just amazing. Here’s hoping that I can indeed capture that in the writing. Thanks for your kind words and comment.
What a lovely post! I was right there with you the whole time. Recently I opened up some of my old high school diaries. I went into it looking for sections about a specific friend who’d inspired one of my characters, but I came away from it teary-eyed, bleeding heart, and emotionally raw for days after. So yes, I know what you’re talking about here. Being thrust back into emotions we’ve forgotten we even had — and how quickly and easily they come racing back. I think one of the best parts of being a writer is that we can use that. “Put the feels to work,” as I say. :)
I wish I’d kept my old diaries and journals…for just this reason…but I threw them all away. Embarrassment or worry that someone would see them, not sure which. But I can well imagine the immediate feelings they would bring up. One of the older women at the brunch was the mother of my best friend (she sadly died a few years ago after a long struggle with schizophrenia), and when I hugged her mother, it was as though the emotions were scratched raw. But also, all the memories of being at my friend’s house, playing and talking, came flooding back. I was teary-eyed then for quite a while after. Yes, putting the feels to work is a good way to say that. Thank you for your kind words, so glad you can relate.