Friday Fire - A Prompt for Re-Remembering
Happy Friday! Today I invite you try out my personal favorite writing exercise: the blind second draft. This works best with a piece you wrote long enough ago that your memory of it is a little hazy now. Rather than reading and revising the original, you’re relying on your recollection to rebuild the piece from scratch. Every time you access a memory, it comes back subtly—or not so subtly—changed, and this exercise will help to draw out elements of your story that you might not have been aware of during the first draft.
Take an old scene you wrote (the older the better) and write it again purely from memory.
Pay attention to the details that stay the same from draft to draft and the ones that show up only in one or the other.
How much has time changed your perception of events?
How did your two drafts compare? Were they nearly identical? Were there new details? A new tone? Did something that seemed so significant the first time you wrote this part of your story turn out to be a minor detail in retrospect?
We would love to hear what you discovered in re-remembering your story! Comment to let us know what surprised you or reassured you in this process.