This time of year, we are often flooded with memories of our childhoods, especially of winter holiday times. Some of the memories may be of difficulties and some may be of times filled with excitement and joy.

Happy or sad, peaceful or filled with anxiety, these memories can lead to vivid writing. In drafting writing from memories, we can take a lesson from Frank McCourt, author of the award-winning memoir Angela’s Ashes.

In the book, he remembers the Friday his mother pushed a pram with his baby twin brothers along Brooklyn streets while McCourt and a younger brother walked along. She was hoping to catch the boys’ father as he came out from work on payday before he drank the money away in bars.

Later that night, the young Frank is in bed with his little brothers and describes what he sees beyond the bedroom door:

I look out at Mam at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, drinking tea, and crying. I want to get up and tell her I’ll be a man soon and I’ll get a job in the place with the big gate and I’ll come home every Friday night with money for eggs and toast and jam and she can sing again “Anyone Can See Why I Wanted Your Kiss.”

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Do you remember wanting to take care of your parents or siblings or friends to make things come out right and fulfill dreams? Write down three or four memories that come to your mind about family situations and events from your younger days, both happy ones and difficult ones. Then, choose one to investigate further by asking more questions of yourself:

1. Where were you when you had these thoughts and wishes? McCourt is in bed with his brothers looking into another room after that walk to find his father. Are you in the back seat of a car? At the kitchen table? In front of a television set? Roller skating down the sidewalk or riding your bike?
2. What did you see? McCourt sees his mother at the table drinking tea. He sees her cigarette. He may see her tears.
3. What did you hear? He hears his mother crying. In wishing to make her able to sing again, he remembers the sound of her singing.
4. What were you wishing for and why? He is wishing for money enough for eggs and toast and jam because dad drinks the money away and his wife an children are hungry. He is wishing to make his mother happy.
5. How were you going to make what you were wishing for happen, make things work out for what you thought was the best? McCourt is going to get a job as he imagines he’ll be a man soon.
6. How did things end up? You’ll have to read Angela’s Ashes, if you haven’t, to find out how they ended up for McCourt, but you know how things ended up for yourself. Write this part, too.

Next:

1. Think about a situation in your life now that you or someone you care about needs help fixing.
2. Write a letter to yourself describing the situation. Use details of setting and details of what things are like and what is at risk if help isn’t forthcoming.
3. Ask yourself for help in achieving the fix and sign your letter.

Then:

1. Write a letter in response from the point of view of that self you’ve just asked to offer help.
2. Visualize where this self is as she writes back to you, what she sees and what she hears, smells, tastes, touches, and sees.
3. Describe the help she offers.
4. What does she ask for in return: That you pay it forward? To be forgiven for not helping sooner? For a kiss, a hug, a smile?

After you have the three pieces, combine them into one essay in parts with a title and subtitle. For instance:

Urgencies

How I Saw It Then

The Help I Ask for Now

What I Do

Creating writing in parts frees you from thinking you need a lot of exposition, which can bog your writing down. Instead, this approach allows the image-making part of your writer’s mind to make connections and deliver felt experience.

I think you’ll see it happens for you, even if at first you didn’t think so. Just write; then assemble and then take another look and feel the connections that leap across the white space between parts. Our minds naturally work to connect experience and make meaning when we free ourselves up from the critic part of us that worries too much about whether we are making sense.

Making sense comes when we explore an experience we have lived by using details and images from that experience toward an end — in this case an urge to connect what we used to feel we could do to help in a situation with how we can help in the present. When we write in this way, we find the  “ah-ha” of insight — a most wonderful aspect of writing — without even knowing exactly how we did it. Living in the mystery — another wonderful aspect of writing.