Reach out with your senses ... Sight. Sound. Smell. Touch.
The senses are a wonderful way to get you thinking about how you experience the world around you and to help you engage with old memories. Senses are particularly powerful with places and people.
When you visited your grandparents’ house as a child, what were the smells? What were the sounds? What music did they play? What was cooking on the stove and how did it smell? When you held your grandmother or grandfather’s hand, what did it feel like?
At first, you may find it difficult to recall such detail. Sit down for a few minutes and focus on remembering those days. Put yourself back in those shoes when you were perhaps in your twenties or even in your teens, you'll be surprised what emerges from your mind.
Sensory-based memories can be some of the most powerful we experience. When we say, reach out with your senses when writing your story, try looking at some old photos. Use triggers like these to recall your life experiences and relive the day that photo was taken. You may just experience a vivid recall of those memories, which in the end will help you write them down.
Another way to access these memories is to think about the foods you love. Reach out with your senses and think back to particular meals if you can or favourite recipes cooked by your parents or grandparents. When I reach out with my senses, in relation to food, I always end up back with the smell of my grandparent's larder in the southwest of Scotland. The larder was a room full of exotic smells: the powerful aroma of demerara sugar, the rich slightly macabre smell of a hanging pheasant or two, and the odd trout on a plate laying ready for that evening's dinner. There was also the smell of freshly-extracted honeycomb frames, laden with heather honey and waiting for their golden nectar to be extracted.
So reach out with your senses to those experiences that are most vivid to you.
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