Writing by numbers

An approach to memoir and other writing

In her book One Hundred Twenty-One Days, Michèle Audin includes a list of numbers. For example:

The Numbers

The numbers, in order, starting with the negatives:

-25, the temperature (in degrees Celsius) in Upper Silesia in January 1945 during the evacuation of Auschwitz

0.577215…, Euler’s constant

…

1.414213.... , the square root of 2, the length of the diagonal of a square with a side of 1

2, grenadiers returning to France in a poem by Heine

3, croissants for a breakfast at the Hotel Raphael

I quite like this list because it is eclectic to the point of being bonkers. For example, a reference to Heine¹ is followed by the number of croissants eaten in a hotel.

It strikes me that the nunbers approach could be a great way of sparking off some writing ideas. For instance, my part-memoir might include:

2, beautiful pens given to me by my mother

8, the age at which I knew I wanted to be a writer

12, the number of years it took from meeting the girl with long hair to asking her for a date.

There are numbers everywhere:

Bus stop, car mileage, route number, by Terry Freedman

I can think of at least four articles I could write inspired by those photographs, and I’ve hardly even started!

1. Famous, perhaps, for saying that where they burn books they will soon burn people.