Memory, The Memoirist, and Editing Personal Story

Writers and Editors Need to Know

Nonfiction writers of personal story are naturally attached to what they’re writing, emotionally. 

I’m first contemplating the neuroscience of memory. We know, for example, that smell is tightly wound with memory, because of the nose’s direct neuronal pathways to the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and a regulator of emotions. 

“Contemporary theories of emotion converge around the key role of the amygdala as the central subcortical emotional brain structure that constantly evaluates and integrates a variety of sensory information from the surroundings and assigns them appropriate values of emotional dimensions.” 

Understanding Emotions: Origins and Roles of the Amygdala

“It is also commonly accepted that odors have a rather unique status for eliciting memories. Indeed, one of the most striking features of odor memory in humans resides in the amazing power of odors to vividly trigger the evocation of autobiographical experiences. This property has been referred to as the “Proust phenomenon” because of the well-known literary anecdote reported by Proust (1919) at the beginning of his novel, Swann’s Way, wherein the flavor of a madeleine cake dipped into a cup of tea unwillingly caused the remembrance of an old detailed memory.”

Memory and Plasticity in the Olfactory System: From Infancy to Adulthood

Most writers have been invited (if not once than many times) to use all the senses in their writing. Obviously, that makes the text more evocative for the reader. 

As I discover more and more every year, I’m fascinated with the writer’s experience during the act of writing. So, I’m trying to build a case for how intensely felt by the nervous system the writing process can be, and therefore how and why writers get “married” to their writing—an important aspect for editors to understand as they suggest changes to what an author has written. 

Because of the physiological psychology of how memories form, and the vividness of our projection of self into the past while we are writing, what we produce from our mnemonic trance is very personal and very specific.

“Every time a memory is reactivated, your brain changes the memory ever so slightly. It’s almost like adding an Instagram filter, with details being filled in and information being updated or lost with each recall.” 

‘“We’re inadvertently applying filters to our past experiences,’ says Steve Ramirez, a Boston University neuroscientist. ‘Memory is less of a video recording of the past, and more reconstructive,’ says Ramirez, a BU College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences.’”

Unlocking the Power of Our Emotional Memory

So, the conscious plumbing of memories (aka, taking a trip down memory lane) is a significant endeavor of reconstructing our personae. 

When an editor comes along and says, “Cut this paragraph,” or “Delete this line,” we’re axing a component of the writer’s process, not to mention the time and effort they’d put into crafting the text. We must assume that the writer thought this piece was essential, or they would have stricken it themselves before handing over their manuscript. 

Is it true that an author can’t be objective about what they’ve written, and therefore must have a second pair of eyes (or third, fourth, and fifth commenters)?

Because a writer has invited editing, is it safe to assume they’re ready to receive substantive critique and comments with nerves of steel?

Seasoned writers are used to getting chopped and rearranged. I can attest that writing for magazines is aptly comparable to riding white rapids. Your single-person hard shell kayak gets flipped, but you’ve got the skills to roll up again and remain on course. The instructor in this video says, “The more stable the kayak, the harder it is to roll back up.” A seasoned writer—and a writer who has, for all intents and purposes, spent their lifetime on their creation—could be less pliable than a beginner. 

No matter the level of experience, we’re all married to our creations. We may develop a tolerance for critique and appreciate the opportunity to cultivate our craft; we may know that we grow from the lesson of each edit or from having a style quirk called out… but the shaping of our personal story by a third party can feel like our persona is getting pruned. 

“It’s that violent motion of your hips that brings the boat upright.”  

How to Roll a Kayak

The willingness to enter the rapids (to extend the metaphor) is commendable, and an editor who understands the writing process—deeply—makes the best editor. 

Writing emotional memories rewires our brain. The artifact of this process is the story. Revising the story is just as forceful in our personal evolution as was crafting it in the first place. And revisiting a memory as we revise enhances the vividness of the memory. 

If we’re recounting a traumatic event, we can try to steel ourselves to the process and recruit competent, sensitive readers at the drafting stages. 

Does this mean an editor must treat a trauma writer with kid gloves? Kindness is called for, but this isn’t the only attribute of a trauma-sensitive editor. The editor really needs to understand that there’s a whole person, and perhaps an enduring belief or feeling, attached to the words. 

This paper explains that the way we form memories is different from the way we recall memories; and that the added step in recalling memories (a pathway through the hippocampus) serves the function of embellishing an old memory with new information. 

The question is, does a prime memory exist in our mental archive that remains pure of any afterthoughts, interpretations, and filters we’ve pinned to it? And how does the writer access memory in its purest form? Meditation, psychedelics, talk therapy, and metacognitive drawing may be useful tools for extracting the pure memory. Raw, free-associative writing with this intent behind it could also extract the pure details. 

Is it safe to uncouple the memory from the stories we’ve laid on top of it that helped us cope?

I do know that as an adult, rehashing a distant memory over and over again can bring to the surface more and more details of a past experience. I have to try hard to remember. I have to spend time in revelry and reminiscence. 

SCENT, since it’s got a direct route to the amygdala, is a very good inroad to deep memory. Smell is the primary sense every animal prioritizes at birth, before vision and hearing come online—this is a survival mechanism. 

“Smell is the only fully developed sense a fetus has in the womb, and it’s the one that is the most developed in a child through the age of around 10 when sight takes over.”

What the nose knows: Experts discuss the science of smell and how scent, emotion, and memory are intertwined — and exploited

Did you know it took so long for sight to be fully developed? What happens around age 10? We’ve mastered the ability to read. We can now read signs and labels, and the world is instantly defined for us. A bit of the child’s active imagination is forever disabled by the capacity to read being enabled. I witnessed this in my children’s development—not a horrible thing, in fact it’s celebrated, but—the nature of their questions changed; less open-ended, less expansive. Much less of the adolescent’s physical world remains open to naive interpretation. Beginner’s mind of infancy and early childhood represents the Neanderthal period in our individual evolution.

If you’d like to access childhood memories to mine them for writing material, therefore, use scent as a guidepost.

PROMPT: Make a list of the earliest scents you can remember. Early memories that may be lying dormant could be evoked. Please do this with care for your nervous system, and your self-regulation tools at the ready. Part two: Read about The Proust Effect. Then write a scene in which a character’s sense of smell triggers a memory. This roundup contains some awesome examples from literature.