I’ve been collecting personal essays and memoirs since the seventh grade.
Yup. Really.
And recently, after years of letting journals stack up in boxes, and collecting digital journals, I finally set aside time to do something with them.
Yay.
And, when I looked over the many journals and TB-level files I found myself pulling on ideas that, in some cases, had spanned not only many decades of memoirs and experiences, but also many writing styles and genres.
How does one mix all that?
The answer is the same one used in any recipe. You choose a binding agent.
A dash of essay. A pinch of memoir. A shake of something political. A little sarcasm for crunch. A little wit for sweetness. Then something to tie the flavors together.
In baking, it’s an egg.
In writing, it’s the tie-in.
So what counts as a binding agent tie-in?
Good news: Anything.
It can be a taste. A sound. A texture. An object. A memory. A mood. A moment. Anything that sneaks through the entire piece and strings the ideas together. It does not need to be grand. It only needs to connect the distributed ideas.
In one piece, I used Cool Whip. Somehow that fluffy little miracle tied together memories from forty years ago and five years ago, along with political views I had scribbled in various places. Cool Whip gave it shape. And, Cool Whip is yummy too.
In the next piece, I used the color of tiles to talk about the treatment of immigrants and my own personal entitlement.
In another piece, I used alien fashion. Yes. Alien Glasses. And somehow that became the anchor that connected memoir and commentary and views that had been looking for a tie-in.
So, I’m now playing more with, and practicing with, pulling together a series of ideas, memoirs and views into one piece with a binding agent – the tie-in.
What is the strangest writing binding-agent you’ve ever used?