Increase Your Working Memory
How do you remember all that stuff? Well, writing is not a passive activity. Like any business, it includes the three stages common to all commerce: research and development, production, and sales.
In this blog, I want to address the first of the three: research and development. For a writer, much of that has to do with memory, the stuff of everything you write.
Since my latter days of what was then called elementary school, I’ve been a compulsive note taker. It has served me well. But these are not simply notes, as in quotes I copy from a book or a show I’m watching; they are dialogues. Let’s universally call the input ‘reading’ no matter whether it comes from reading, listening to a lecture, watching a movie or documentary, or whatever input the information is. As I ‘read’, I ask questions, I think of my opinions based upon points being made, I disagree in my head, I – in effect – have a constant dialogue with my reading material and the author: agreeing, questioning, disagreeing, becoming enlightened.
As I have this dialogue, I write down my thoughts, not necessarily what is written in the thing I’m reading (or seeing/hearing), but rather what I think, how I feel, how it affects me. To me, it is more important what I think and feel than what the author wants me to think and feel. I make it personal. As personal, I remember it.
I’ve gotten so used to this that when I start any reading, I grab a sheet of paper (which I started in about fourth grade and have adapted so it still works great) or I open my Goodnotes app on my iPad (which I started this past year) and I write the following headings:
Main Points:
Vocab Words:
Personal Application:
Quotes:
To Read:
To View:
To Contact:
To Research:
(I think the above categories are self-explanatory, so I’ll leave them as they are without explanation.)
Then, as I read, I dialogue and quickly put my thoughts under the appropriate heading for quick reference. These headings are what work for me. Use your own subheadings that work for you.
This technique works in multiple ways. I first hear the info. I think about it. I organize it in my head. I write it down in my own words that have meaning for me. I read it again and reflect. All of these activities utilize a different part of the brain and tie these synaptic connections together. Then, when I sleep, they become a part of my long-term memory. In other words, I remember, and these become permanent parts of my memory bank, my resources and building blocks for when I start to create. This is my research and development.
Give this a try and see if it doesn’t improve your comprehension and memory. Reading or listening to a lecture for me is not a passive act. It’s a dialogue. And, in a dialogue, we all have something to say…and remember.
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