What I Learned from my Memory Whack-a-Mole Project

Last week I experimented on a new way to catch up on journaling, inspired by former Utah governor Michael Leavitt’s Thousand Stories project. In an attempt to come up with more anecdotes for his speeches, Leavitt sat down and wrote only a few words—one line—for each story he could remember. Then he decided to shoot for a hundred stories, which, over time, morphed into a thousand.

My project consisted of writing only a few words about each day on a February 2016 calendar until each day was covered, and then adding details as I remembered them until it could be transferred over and completed in a more permanent journal format. Because of the way memories seem to pop up at random, I decided to call my project Memory Whack-a-Mole.

I wasn’t able to complete February 2016 by the end of the week, but it was a fantastic start and I’m still pleased with the results so far.

My Observations

I’ve learned a few things from my maiden voyage, but I have a few caveats to add.

Each day last week, I got up at 5 a.m. and wrote in my daily journal, and then I worked on my Memory Whack-a-Mole—which was essentially catching up in my journal for the month of February. Now, I had already kept a sporadic journal throughout February, but when I commenced this Whack-a-Mole project last week, I started from scratch.

Basically, I wrote in my journal twice a day last week. Add on top of that revising my upcoming e-book on journal writing (called Old School Blogging, to be published in the next couple months), as well as attempting to write 1,500 words a day on the first draft of my third novel manuscript in a fantasy trilogy (more on that in another blog entry). That means by Saturday I was getting burned out from all the writing.

I found that last week’s techniques sparked memories I hadn’t written in my daily February journal entries; however, there were also details I wrote in my February journal entries I hadn’t remembered while writing in last week’s project.

My greatest word count for Memory Whack-a-Mole came from writing about the first week of February because that was the most memorable week; however, in my regular journal writing, I didn’t write much about that week for the same reason: because it was so memorable—and packed. Being the week of RootsTech 2016, I had the least amount of time—and/or focus—to devote to writing in my journal, but it took the least amount of effort to remember it.

The Takeaway

The whole point of Memory Whack-a-Mole is to make journal writing possible and easier if you're not keeping up with it.

If you don’t keep a journal but want to, start today by writing about yesterday. Then tomorrow, do the same thing you did today, except designate a specific time each day for journal writing. Then do it every day at that designated time.

Starting a worthwhile habit is the easy part; continuing on with it until it becomes habitual is what’s hard. Even if you make the time to write in your journal every day, because not all days are created equal there will be days you don’t touch your journal at all because of conflicting, escalated priorities. Once you miss a day, it’ll be easier to miss the next day and slightly more difficult to catch-up. Then it becomes a slippery slope.

You need to have at least one day per week when you don’t think about or do work at all, when you have time for quiet reflection. If you work six to seven days a week, I give you my deepest sympathies and hope you can reach a point in your life to have at least one day off per week from anything involving work so you can have time for quiet reflection.

For me, that time is Sunday afternoons, after I’ve returned home from church, eaten, and snuck in a much-needed nap. Then my schedule is open enough for me to sit down at my laptop and start writing freely in my journal. Find what time each week is best for you and stick with it.

Don’t give up on something as important in the long-term as journaling, but for those times you find yourself having lived an entire month without having recorded it, Memory Whack-a-Mole is a new technique to help you prime your memory and write about the past.

Reaching a Checkpoint

Today I reached what I thought was a milestone in my journey to publishing my first novel, only to find out it’s just a check point.

I've been working on my first novel for a few years now, tweaking it sporadically while I mainly focused on meeting magazine deadlines. Most of the time I've worked on the manuscript, I've been “perfecting” the Prologue rather than actually finishing the first draft. More than one published author has told me how foolish that is. One published author told me in 2013 that I need to know how the novel ends before I can find out how it begins. (Wrap your head around THAT!) Last November, another published author explained to me that if writing a novel is like baking cookies, the first draft is like putting all the ingredients onto the table. Once I've got all the ingredients out and the oven has been turned on, then I can start to mix the ingredients to make the cookies.

Today, I triumphantly raised both hands in the air, believing that I had finished the first draft of my first-ever novel manuscript!

My novel, the first in the Nova Chronicles series, is called A Reason to Run. It’s about a young man who lives on the planet of Elba, as part of a society divided into clans. Elba’s orbit around its star is such that the planet is habitable for three years at a time, followed by a fatally cold and uninhabitable year of winter. While the protagonist, Errol Nova, and his sister live under tyrannical rule, the theme of the novel is more about how family trumps society.

Once I reached a satisfactory climax and denouement today, my novel clocked in at 46,246 words. However, as I did some research on novel length, I found that, yes, it’s technically long enough to be considered a “novel” rather than a “novella,” but it’s more stranded between the two. It’s like in a game of Clue when you roll the dice and exit one room, having successfully pinpointed the right suspect, room, and weapon—you just need to get to the right room—but because luck wasn't a lady you’re now stuck on a square in the void where you can’t do anything but watch helplessly as your sister enters the Hall and solves the game.

In other words, the typical length of an adult novel is more like 80,000 to 90,000 words, and fantasy novels can be over 100,000 words without being considered too long. Going back to the analogy of the cookies, I've only got half of the ingredients out on the table. I guess I’d better turn off the oven.

At any rate, what I've finished writing today will be considered “Part I,” whether it’s published as a stand-alone, teaser novel or is the first half of a much larger, complete novel. That means I've got a lot of work to do revising Part I. I already know the direction I’m going to take with Part II, I just need to find where those ingredients are stashed.

Stay tuned, Elbers.