Thoughts on Writing in The Moment and Questions about Whose Moment
Brent Jones
What does saying you are “writing in the moment” mean? Sometimes, it means that what you are writing about is something you can observe happening around you at the very moment you are writing. This makes it easier to capture details, as a slow-motion camera’s input gives focus, and the writing is actual to life and a reflection of the “here and now.”
In addition to your particular moment, you can capture a moment in time for the characters in the plot.
What is happening around you now involves many things, and a choice has to be made as to what to include and what not to include. Some events stand out in the moment; you can sense them, almost breathing them in. Then, you capture the moment by using the reasons to direct your thoughts to the details.
A life story can be a series of chosen references to past moments. As you tell or write the story, you choose the particular moments and interpret them differently than when they happened. Seldom do you hear a person tell their own life story the same way each time they mean it unless they are reading it because, in a different moment, more experiences filter the memories and conclusions?
The more life teaches us and the more experiences we have, the more we find that past events seem different when re-examined.
The conclusions we draw from past events, and in those cases where those events strongly influence our self-image, re-examining events can change parts or all of our self-image and lead to reinventing our self-image.
You can write at the moment when the subject of your story is happening, or you can reach back for specific moments, but those moments change each time you reach back for them.
Quotes
“Given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it, look at it and see it- try it on- live it - exhaust it- and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it."—Erma Bombeck.
Don’t Let Yesterday Take Up Too Much Of Today.”–Will Rogers
Four Good Books on Writing
Stephen King on Writing. George Orwell, Why I Write. Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir. Making A Literary Life, Carolyn See.