Proust Like

There are certain tools I use when I write – pencil, pen, notebook and the computer. The one technique that finds its way into my writing is a memory or a thought or something that evokes and opens up my writing. I use the memory as well as the flash back method.

A few years ago, when I was attending Chatham College for my master’s degree in writing, I wrote a non-fiction piece about myself. It was a piece about a mom reading the want ads and realizing she has done most of the jobs advertised. In the piece, I circled the jobs that I could do, like School Bus Driver, Nanny, Social Worker, Nurse, Cleaning Woman, Secretary and more. Each occupation hit high on my memory of those jobs that I accomplished while being a mother of nine children.

The article was written in tongue and cheek humor. The bottom line was, no matter how many children I had and all those jobs that I did, I wasn’t qualified to get that job. I didn’t have an employer or rather I didn’t come with the recommendations that were needed for the job.

After sending my story out to a number of magazines and newspapers, a year later, The Pittsburgh Press picked up my story and published it. The day after it appeared, I went to one of my classes, where the Professor pulled out my story and congratulated me on my ‘Proust like’ writing.

I did a double take realizing he had compared me to Marcel Proust, a famous French novelist. Proust is remembered for writing his memory of a Madeleine, a small sponge cake from his monumental novel, Remembrance of Things Past. The novel was published in seven parts between the years of 1913 – 1921.

Now, here in present day, I had been compared to Proust. That was a high compliment and one that still keeps me writing!