Working in a Series

I recently picked up at the library a coffee table-size book, okay, coffee table book, about Georgia O’Keefe called To See Takes Time. The essence of this book ticked all the right boxes for me:

*minutia=O’Keefe spent time on small details, looking at and studying common everyday objects to represent in her drawings
*she would KEEP COMING BACK to a subject, not so much to perfect it, but to find release from the hold it had over her—just like a memory we keep returning to

She did this throughout her artistic career, to the end of her life.

Never one and done. She’d revisit a spiral, finding the diddle in nature, in breaking sea waves, in clouds and the wind. She’d attach different color schemes, thickness to the spirals. Play and experimentation. In the repetition came discovery, some new aspect or facet.

With flash memoir, a memory sits with us, often interjecting itself unwanted or called upon. It is as if the memory needs to be worked out, tugged and transformed like taffy. Lately, I’ve been revising my nonfiction cycling manuscripts for hopeful publication. I’ve written vignettes or memories not once or twice, but often coming at it from different angles, finding correlations or links to unlock other memories or an underlying WHY. It might come across to the reader like: Didn’t she just say this or a few pages back she wrote about this exact same thing—yet, it is intentional, about working in a series in order to grow a whole.

So whether a visual or literary artist—try working on a series, perhaps as warm up exercises or for therapy (I’m not a perofessional) but to see how the again and again gains new insight.