Did your family take vacations during those years? Get these down on paper. Who were your teachers, your classmates? What did you wear? Who and what were you jealous of? Now branch out a little. Move on to first grade, to second, to third. Don't worry if what you write is no good, because no one is going to see it. Try to get the words and memories down as they occur to you. So you might start by writing down every single thing you can remember from your first few years in school. Then a number of memories would come to mind, of other dates and other Indian restaurants. But if the person could narrow it down to, say, Indian, I might remember one lavish Indian palace, where my date had asked the waiter for the Rudyard Kipling sampler and later for the holy-cow tartare. When I had been writing food reviews for a number of years, there were so many restaurants and individual dishes in my brainpan that when people asked for a recommendation, I couldn't think of a single restaurant where I'd ever actually eaten. Now, the amount of material may be so overwhelming that it can make your brain freeze. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. 'I don't even know where to start,' one will wail. Historically they show up for the first day of the workshop looking like bright goofy ducklings who will follow me anywhere, but by the time the second class rolls around, they look at me as if the engagement is definitely off. Their sense of self and story shatters and crumbles to the ground. But after a few days at the desk, telling the truth in an interesting way turns out to be about as easy and pleasurable as bathing a cat. Year after year my students are bursting with stories to tell, and they start writing projects with excitement and maybe even joy-finally their voices will be heard, and they are going to get to devote themselves to this one thing they've longed to do since childhood.

We have so much we want to say and figure out. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Getting Started The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth.

Bird by bird anne