Transitions constitute an important part of writing fiction.
There are the ones that allow for dips back in time, memories or flashbacks, as we like to call them. And then there are those that propel us forward; leaps is what my first and second semester MFA advisor called them.
Transitions connect much of the writer’s life pushing and pulling us from one place to another, in and out of one memory then onward to a new project.
So much of what drives us to write, compels us to write our stories are memories of what once was and now is never more.
We may never write stories that include those memories or even offer the slightest allusion to them.
Yet they remain forever with us, provoking us to think and perceive the world in new ways, to raise and ponder questions yet receiving answers and new ones arising from the ones most recently responded to.
And then we have the new realities unleashed and opened to us through new developments and technological advancements such as e-mail, the blogosphere.
I recently scrolled through the list of photographs arranged on a blog called “My Parents Were Awesome.”
The developer of the site aims to bring focus a reality sometimes unsettling and yet comforting to those us, who as sons and daughters, granddaughters and grandsons do not always remember or think of–the life our parents lived before we were conceived.
That they even had a life before considering the possibility of our birth raises glee and consternation. The questions are enormous and fluid.
How much do I matter? Why do I matter?
What might have occurred had I not been born?
How did my presence in the lives of my parents and/or grandparents change them?
Was that change good?
What do they think of the fact that we see them as awesome?
Can they see the pictures posted of them?
Do they care?
And if so, how, and why?
The title of the site also tells much. My Parents Were Awesome
Children and offspring carry out the act of posting the pictures.
The site owner prefers to simply display the pictures with only the first names of those in the picture and that of the person who submitted the photo?
Viewing the stream of pictures delivers and hypnotic effect. A story rests in every face of each image. And then there is what lies missing–names, dates, places?
That, we can fill in.
Imagination at work, once again.
Life provides the very substrate from which we write.
Go live it.
And write.