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Hoarding Memories and Selling Them

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    The chapters of a writer's autobiography are more than just a personal history book or written accounting of their life; if published in book form, they are memories the author cannot let go of that rest forever on written pages bounded together on three sides. We all have memories that we hold onto for as long as we can but when we publish them they can live on and be refreshed long after our minds can no longer recall them and even after we are dead!

    They live again anytime someone reads the words we leave behind, and if we are skilled enough to write clear and concise accounting's the reader might even feel our joys or our pains just as we did when everything we wrote about was happening.

    That is my goal when I am writing about the things and people that were around me as my stories were unfolding; what was happening and how I felt, and the impact if any that each chapter might have had and what came next for me. If we don't document what we believe was special or in some way interesting then all of those memories die with us and become entombed in a brain that either gets buried or burned to ashes. The books are our legacy and legacies are built on what we remember and how others interpret how we explain them.

    It is a gift when we can recall something we did or something someone said to us that was worth remembering, and when we play them back in our heads and turn them into short stories that explain something about us or about someone we want remembered we excuse ourselves for thinking any of it was worth retelling over and over. We are able to do that when we hoard our memories and keep believing they are worth holding onto even if they are only special to us. But the downside to being a memory hoarder is that we keep things up there that we wish we could forget but never will.

    In that regard there is no such thing as "just a bad memory" whether it involved an event or some other person. Good biography writers do not omit the failures and disappointments that may be within a story, they include them and do their best to hope for forgiveness or understanding. If you think about it, it is our collective memories (good and bad) that best describe who we are.

    Sometimes only shards of what is buried deep in our subconscious ooze far enough out to trigger what we hope will never be forgotten and when that happens the best we can do is doctor them up a little or embellish them with words that tell a better story; but even if something gets left out, whether it is important or not, at least part of it wasn't lost.

    When that happens it is like finding an old family treasure or something that was special to you in youth that you refuse to part with; it could be a coffee mug your dad always drank from with a crack in it or missing a handle, or maybe it's an old broken toy that you have grown too old to play with but still cannot live without. For me it might be a radio I forgot I had but no longer works, or one that does but there are no good radio stations left to listen to but I keep it anyway, if only because it reminds me of something I want to remember.

    When I wrote a book about my life as a radio announcer I relied on what I believe is still a healthy memory and what is stored up there to tell stories about a very special period (1971-1993) and why decades later I was determined to relive it by building an Internet radio station that would allow me to keep a good thing going even if no one else wanted to, and to have a forum to keep sharing what is in my head. I have written similar books about broadcasting as well as many others outlining what I believe has been a life well lived; one that wasn't always traveled on smooth roads surrounded by pretty scenery, but on roads that were interesting to me; it is replayed over and over again in my head and in print.

    That's the thing about memories; without them we only have what is happening now or what did recently to share, and as anyone my age can attest our stories might be pretty boring by comparison to everything else we saw or endured. Regardless of what happened yesterday or last month, none of it is anything I particularly hope stays with me forever. But that's another thing about memories, they get stored in a crowded place whether we want them there or not. If there is such a thing as "memory almost full" mine may be getting close to it but I hope there is room enough still to hoard what's already there even though I have been selling off as many as possible in my books; these blogs are merely free samples and reminders of a product that has been years in the making.

     Interested buyers can find them here-

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_11/176-8132627-0221526?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rick+minerd&sprefix=rick+minerd%2Caps%2C193