I should ask an expert if memories and imagination are
somehow intertwined because at this point in my long life I'm putting memories
and the ideas they sometimes produce down on paper, so to speak. Since 2013,
I’ve written thirteen novels and am currently at work on a fourteenth.
In a work of fiction, everything our characters say and do
is the result of what we imagine happening to them. And not always, but often,
it’s something we, or a friend or family member, personally experienced. Or
something we read about somewhere, or perhaps learned through research. We then
try to apply this information to what we want to happen with our characters.
While I occasionally have to search through my memory banks, I’ve been blessed
with considerable retention, and recall nearly always comes. I started writing
at the age of seventy-five, so those are pretty big memory banks!
Not all memories are beautiful, of course. And having a good
memory sometimes means sleepless nights regretting past bad choices, going over
a long list of things done and not done which might have meant a different
life. It’s a pointless exercise and thankfully, I don’t do it too often. And
it’s a trade-off I can live with, and do so gratefully. I’ve seen first-hand
the devastation caused by dementia and I’d rather deal with my bad memories
than lose them.
Maybe this piece isn’t so much about memory as about the
remarkable capacity of the human mind and its ability to create. How does that
actually happen? With me, it began with a considered recall of a traumatic
experience from my teenage years, and an attempt to feel what a close friend
did when both her parents were shot to death one horrible night in January
1954, by her estranged brother-in-law. And in the aftermath, how she found the
courage and fortitude to go on with her young life, playing the leading role of
Julie Jordan in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical drama Carousel, in which Julie's husband takes his own life and leaves her alone to raise their
child.
I wrote my first book, How I Grew Up, in the first
person, setting myself the daunting task of attempting to live another person’s
pain. In Man with No Yesterdays, I went even further, trying to put
myself in the head of a Vietnam veteran who had suffered a traumatic brain injury and
lost all memory of his former life. Imagine having to live with such an
enormous loss.
Not long ago a high school friend with whom I communicate
regularly reminded me of a day trip with a mutual friend—actually, the
principal character in How I Grew Up, Anita Barker (she’s Melanie
Stewart in the book, which is a roman à clef). My friend Audrey even
sent me photos from this trip taken in the summer of 1954. I still can’t
remember that trip, and my failure to do so gave me a glimmer of understanding
for my character Jake Cameron.
Currently, I’m writing the eighth—and perhaps final—novel in
my mystery series, which is set in Cincinnati, Ohio in the nineteen-sixties. My
time in that lovely city began in the fall of 1955 when I matriculated to the
College-Conservatory of Music. Locating “The Augusta McKee Mystery Series” in a
city I fell in love with at seventeen and delighted in for sixteen years has
awakened many happy memories. Thanks to the marvels of the internet, I've been
able to affirm nearly everything I need to double-check particulars about my
time in Cincinnati. (Not the least of these tools are Google maps which have
helped me numerous times revisit different areas of the city and trace the exact
routes I drove.)
When I published How I Grew Up I at first thought it
would be “one and done”—I’d actually written a book. But it was only the
beginning, as one story brought to mind another that I needed to write. That
has continued for over eight years. I’ve set all my books in the past, during
remembered times, with many containing remembered events. Books that sprang
from my mind, my imagination—and my memories.
poster for The Pocono Cinema and Cultural Center
designed by Katy Schulz Burton
For more information please visit my website, www.susanmoorejordan.com
