Welcome to Root Stories — the Substack home for storytellers and memory hunters in search of the stories that made them.
Why “Root Stories”?
Root Stories has several meanings. It encompasses my love for unearthing memories and origin stories and shaping them into juicy tales; and my love of nature writing, gardening, growing and ecology.
Our root stories are our origin stories. They’re the stories we tell about ourselves and our history; the stories that connect us to our past, and the stories we tell when we are shaping our own future.
As well as a writer and storyteller I’m also an ecologist and gardener, and since many of my own stories involve plants and nature in some way, the name Root Stories is also a handy segue into all that shizz.
Whether you’re root-bound, rootless, digging deep into your past, dealing with growing pains, a late bloomer, or going to seed, I hope you’ll find something here that appeals.
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What’s it all about?
Hi! I’m Miranda and I’m a writer, photographer, gardener, ecologist, and other-multi-hyphenate-stuffer. This Substack is where I’ll be writing about my usual topics of memory and storytelling, while also delving into my own root stories. You may also find a smattering of tales about gardening, foraging, dog-cuddling and eating cheese straight from the fridge.
Mostly, I’ll be writing about:
The mechanics and psychology of storytelling. How it works, why it works and why we all respond to stories.
Memory and how it works, including prompts to unearth your own memories so you can build a bank of personal stories.
I’ll also touch on how storytelling tools are used to persuade you, manipulate you and change the way you think.
Oh and nature. Nature has been a big part of my world for a long time so it inevitably makes an appearance throughout my work.
I do have a loose plan for what I’ll be writing and when, but it’s highly likely that I’ll forget/ignore/be frustrated/annoyed by that plan and just write about whatever is bubbling up at the time it bubbles. I love planning. It makes me feel safe. Delivering a plan exactly as written, I find very restrictive. I prefer to think of my plan as a loose guide.
Already, I’ve found myself using this space to explore more personal stories than I had expected. I was expecting to do my usual arms-length thing of encouraging other people to tell their stories while sitting on my own. But Substack has been working its magic on me and stuff is emerging. It’s getting messy and I kinda like it. I’m also slightly freaked out by it. That’s normal, right?
If you like orderly content along a consistent single theme, this may not be the place for you. Likewise if you have a problem with occasional swearing.
Why subscribe?
My plan (you already know how that’s likely to work out) is to publish once a week. This will probably include a long-form personal memoir piece once a month, and shorter pieces and memory prompts to help kick start your own writing in the intervening weeks.
Here’re a couple of the longer essay pieces you might like to check out to see if it’s the kind of thing you want to subscribe to:
The Seeds of Magic
Why didn't she go to the police?
And here are a couple of shorter pieces and memory prompts if that’s what you’re after:
The Parsley Patch
Breathing in the Past
I hope you’ll subscribe, and if you read anything you like here please do share/restack.
A few words about memory prompts
I spent most of my adult life believing I had a terrible long-term memory. My short-term memory was just fine. I didn’t need a diary to remember appointments or present-day commitments. Faces, people, places, all good.
But I could recall very little of my childhood or of my teenage years. Even my early adulthood was fuzzy. When my peers told tales of first concerts, first crushes, holidays past, I dredged my data bank of personal memories and came up with zilch. I honestly thought my brain was broken.
It bothered me. Our memories are cultural and generational touchstones. They age us, they unite us. They define us as belonging to one generation, to one tribe or another. We connect to one another through story. How could I call myself a writer if I didn’t have access to my own stories?
Only by deliberately seeking out tools to prompt my memory, by challenging the story I told myself of my “poor memory” did I realise that the memories were there. They just maybe weren’t the same as my peers’. Throughout my early life, I had been taught not to trust or to value my own experience. I had shut out the the good memories for fear of unlocking the bad.
I’ve been writing memory prompts for a while now. While Substack is obviously focussed on writing, the prompts are of value for anyone who wants to unearth their own memories and create a bank of personal stories. If you’d like to receive future memory prompts, please subscribe. And maybe drop me a line to tell me about your own memory story.
