Ask someone to write a letter to a stranger and most of them will begin with themselves: a name, a job, a list of things they like. It is a reasonable instinct. A stranger knows nothing, so you hand over the facts.
But facts are the least interesting thing a stranger can receive. A list of interests is something you read once and forget. What stays with a reader is a small moment: the light on the stairs this morning, the sentence you overheard and didn’t answer, the way a colleague folds a coat over a chair.
Why small moments work
A small moment is specific, and specific is the opposite of a blank page. You don’t have to decide what your life means before you can write about it. You only have to remember what happened.
It also does something quiet for the reader. A summary of who you are asks them to form an opinion. A moment asks them to look. And because nobody has seen it except you, there is nothing to compare it to and nothing to judge.
A form that already exists
In 1970 the American artist Joe Brainard published I Remember, a memoir in which every entry begins with those two words. The collected edition holds nearly 1,500 memories and gives no more weight to the profound than to the banal: a childhood in Oklahoma, a summer, an object, a classroom, side by side. The French writer Georges Perec later wrote his own version, Je me souviens, dedicated to Brainard. And the poet Kenneth Koch is credited with being among the first to use “I remember” in the classroom, as a way to teach children to write.
The form is almost embarrassingly simple, which is the point. It removes the question “what should I write about?” and leaves only “what do I remember?” The answer is usually smaller than you expect, and better for it.
In Italy, Francesco Piccolo — also one of the screenwriters of the My Brilliant Friend series — has made a similar bet in his books of momenti trascurabili: that the things we’d never think to mention are the ones that carry most of a life.
How to try it
Pick a short stretch of time: this morning, last week, a summer. Write down three things you remember, each starting with “I remember.” Don’t choose the important ones. Choose the ones that arrive first, then add the detail that makes each one yours: a colour, a sound, a place, a temperature.
If you’re writing to someone you’ve never met, send one of them. Skip the introduction. One moment, described well, tells a reader more about you than a paragraph of self-description, and it leaves them room to remember something of their own.
Today’s opening: I remember a sound from a room I no longer go into.