Every Writer Should Also Write Memoir.

News Flash: The Donkey’s Song stemmed from my memoir writing. That Donkey is me!

For today’s Memoir Mondays assignment, I want people to draw a map of their childhood neighborhoods. If you study my map closely, you can see that my childhood home was within walking distance of the foundation blocks of my entire life. Cotton fields surrounded my neighborhood. My grandparents lived on the block in front of my house. My schools were across the street from my grandparents, and my church was down the street from my house–in the other direction.

During the summer, I walked to my church each morning for two weeks–to attend Vacation Bible School. My memories of walking to church for Bible School are mixed with the fragrance of the roses that were blooming on fences. along that path, the smell of freshly mown grass, and the morning dew that soaked my tennis shoes, as I walked.

Each winter, however, my church became a tiny Bethlehem, where the town’s children, donned with bathrobes, towels, and white sheets became the shepherds and the angels that greeted the Baby Jesus. Allow me to preface what I am saying with the fact that during the 1950s, people in my hometown didn’t travel very much. For years, I barely left the place where I grew up, and probably because of that, I had a vivid imagination.

During the fall, a small, dusty carnival pulled into my town, but there was no movie theater where I lived. I never went to Disneyland nor any other massive entertainment venue. Think, if you will, how very thrilled I was by a story about a dark night in which a giant, miraculous star hung in the sky. In my child’s eye, that star was the most spectacular fireworks show possible, and because of that light, “Heaven and Nature Sang” to me.

I often tell people that I grew up in the middle of a cotton patch, and that is not far from the truth. I wasn’t wealthy. My dad was a barber. My mother was the church secretary, and when I was a child, I picked cotton. I only got new toys at Christmas. Christmas became the most momentous time of my year, and I cherish my childhood memories of Christmas. 

Each Christmas season my dad would drive home with a Christmas tree tied to the top of his old Chevy station wagon, and my family would begin to ornament it with strings of colorful lights. After that, I would sit in my otherwise dark living room and marvel at the lights on the Christmas tree. I loved to watch them reflecting from the panes of the frosty picture window in front of which our Christmas tree rested. 

When I was a child in Sunday School, I heard about a special night when a magical star lit the way toward a Baby who lay in a manger in Bethlehem. In my child mind, I understood that this Baby had changed the world. When Jesus was born, the greatest fireworks display ever burst into the sky. and to this day, I love the color of magical lights. 

As an adult, I was fortunate to live near New York City for several years. I was over 60 when I first visited New York City. I was over 60 when I visited art museums and first saw the famous art that, for many years, I had only adored in books. I was over 60 when I first pressed my nose against the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue and watched the animated Christmas scene sprin round and round.

Soon after the moment I recorded in the above video, I went to see the Rockette performance s at  Radio City Music Hall in New York City. “New York, New York….” New York City is a celebration at Christmas time, but when the stage at Radio City Music Hall darkened, and live animals began walking across the stage toward a manger, I wept–as I recalled the Christmases of my childood when I, draped in a white sheet, hovered over the Baby doll resting in a little manger in my hometown church.

I had begun writing The Donkey’s Song years before that day, but after I saw the clumsy little donkey clip clop across the stage–in the company of the finely clad wise men clan in magnificent robes riding camels in New York City, the magic of my childhood Christmases flooded me again. After I got home, I finished writing The Donkey’s Song.
I AM THE DONKEY who sang at Christmas time!

The Donkey’s Song is MY story. I am the little, plain donkey who was bedazzled by the birth of a Baby King.

And for people who are writing their memoirs, here is the most salient point: I began writing The Donkey’s Song while I was writing about Christmas in my journal.

Many stories and books spring out of memoir. Trust me about that. From Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life, numerous works have sprung out of the memories that authors have recalled from their own lives.

Should Picture Book Writers Write Memoirs? Definitely.

Every writer should revisit and journal the memories from their own lives. After all, our own stories are the soil out of which every other story that we tell grows. Harvest your memories. Harvest your past, and turn it into something fresh.

Almost exactly two years ago today, I opened my first box of picture books shipped from Penguin Random House.

Over and over again, I have repeated these words:

It Is A Miracle That The Donkey’s Song Has Been Published!

A Pitch for #PBpitch: How My Picture Book The Donkey’s Song Was Discovered

Today, I want to thank God, yet again–for the miracles that I have experienced during my lifetime, and I especially want to thank God for the grateful heart that He gave me–and the miracle of my memory.

Today, I want to encourage every writer of every type of writing to also write memoir.

Today’s Memoir Monday Assignment: Draw a Map of the Neighborhood of Your Childhood–all you need is a rough, crue sketch:

Memoir Mondays: Draw A Map of the Area Around Your Home