Memoir Writing Wrangles

Getting Going

Before starting on a memoir, I wrote short fiction. I’d made a few attempts at writing a novel, but I don’t think my heart was a hundred percent in the topics I chose, something essential, I think, for me to dedicate myself to a short story, or anything I write.

Being a feel-your-way-in-the-dark type of writer, the biggest obstacle for me with the memoir I’m working on, was how to start. I never know what I’m going to write until I’m actually writing and out it comes, I never pre-think it. Only when I’m editing, do I start to consider theme, symbols and structure. It’s a kind of faith which has worked well for me. Don’t think!

The thing that got me writing short fiction was learning free writing (writing fast, without thought) and also to dedicate a set amount of time to my writing, sit down and get on with it whatever happened.

My usual technique of playing around and gradually allowing a story to magically assemble itself didn’t seem like it would work for a full-length work; if I tried to plan or write down ideas for structures or themes, my analytical side crept in and inhibited my creativity. Or my imaginative side created ever-expanding possibilities-not usually a problem for me, but the intuitive part of creativity that makes the important decisions that slowly build a piece of work, giving it direction in a relaxed, unconscious way, didn’t seem to be working and I felt like I was back at university becoming overwhelmed by all the notes I’d write in the margins of our set texts. Not the right state of mind for writing, I thought.

Maybe it was because writing ‘the truth’ felt less free. I was impatient to just get straight to the writing and frustrated by all the timelines and recording of memories, all the preparation that seemed to be needed instead of just making shit up. Unlike fiction where I could just run with things and change direction if needed, this felt very different. It felt restrictive to consider the truth of things that had happened, how to use fictional techniques to convey this truth without making too much shit up, and how to add commentary into all of this, anathema to my fiction writing. Last of all, it was about me, my story. Trying to see and know yourself is not very easy, and making myself into a character brought up questions like, is this how I really think, talk, am? Some of what I wrote was stiff and stilted; the descriptions were there but I was not getting my emotions across in the way I wanted, I was not getting across how I’d really felt.

I realised that I was not committed enough. I was concerned about not writing fiction, something I had done long enough to feel confident and happy doing. Just one last story, I kept telling myself and would write a new short story, working on the memoir in between. The trouble was that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Eventually, I did commit myself to the memoir. I accepted I needed to give it my full attention, and that it was a different kind of work to writing fiction, some of it mundane. I got down to going through twenty-years of my dream diaries, something I wanted to include in the memoir. It was frustrating at times, but also enjoyable. I was often surprised by what I’d been like and how I’d felt at different ages. It expanded my view of myself and my life; I realised I’d been looking at the past from the perspective of how I am now and had forgotten a lot about what I’d done and felt. It gave me comfort, made me laugh, and helped me to believe my own painful feelings that had been telling me just how bad things had been. It also gave me some distance, which allowed me to see my younger selves more objectively.

I realised that the difficulties I was having were a part of learning to write creative non-fiction. This type of writing was entirely new. Wrangling with how to write it was somehow connected to how I would end up writing the story. Like with my fiction, I just had to sit my arse down and keep going.