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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

If you’ve lived an interesting story, should you write about it?

12/12/2016

17 Comments

 
A few months ago I was talking about my reading to a friend who’d just published his first e-book. I thought he might enjoy Belonging which, I said, features aspects of recent Indian history that appear in fiction less often than Partition, the backdrop to Where the River Parts. Oh, I was there, said my friend – or more eloquent words to that effect. You were there during Partition? quoth I. You should write about it!
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Entire theses could be written on my tactlessness in this exchange. Firstly, despite knowing his age (he was anticipating a significant birthday), which part of the world he hails from and the year in which India gained independence from Britain and tore itself apart, it never occurred to me that my friend might have experienced this significant historical event when trains full Muslims crossing the newly-created border into Pakistan passed trains of Hindus heading in the other direction, with many from both sides massacred along the way. Secondly, despite knowing that crime (the genre of his first novel) is more popular than the literary fiction I prefer, I still had the arrogance to propose he switch genres. But it’s a third blunder that forms the focus of this post: the assumption that if you’ve lived an interesting story, you should write about it. Particularly as I actually believe the opposite.

I was reminded of this when I read
a recent article by Amitav Ghosh the Guardian in which he writes about not writing about a significant event in his life:

On the afternoon of March 17, 1978, when I was 21, I was stuck in the middle of the first tornado to hit Delhi in recorded meteorological history. As is often the case with people who are waylaid by unpredictable events, for years afterwards my mind kept returning to my encounter with the tornado .… To think of it in terms of chance and coincidence seemed only to impoverish the experience: it was like trying to understand a poem by counting the words …

Novelists inevitably mine their own experience when they write. No less than any other writer have I dug into my own past while writing fiction. It is certainly true that storms, floods and unusual weather events do recur in my books, and this may well be a legacy of the tornado. Yet oddly enough, no tornado has ever figured in my novels. Nor is this due to any lack of effort on my part. Indeed, I have returned to the experience often over the years, hoping to put it to use in a novel, only to meet with failure at every attempt.

Referring to this article in
a recent review of a cli-fi novel, I queried his reasoning that he didn’t write about this experience because it was too incredible to be believed, and wondered if there might be an alternative explanation. While I have no knowledge, apart from what’s quoted above, of how this experience affected him, just as I don’t know what Partition meant to my friend, I do know that some formative experiences can be very difficult to fictionalise, not so much, as Ghosh implies, because of the nature of the event itself, but because of its profound personal relevance. I do think it’s safer to leave some stories in the consulting room.

Ironically, the best illustration I’ve found of a story that can’t be told by the person it belongs to is in fiction. War heroine and former SOE agent, Marian Sutro, is being interviewed by a journalist in Tightrope by Simon Mawer (p89):

He’d seen the newsreels, of course and interviewed some who claim to have been at the liberation of Belsen. What was her experience? ‘My readers would love to know. We need to tell the public what it was like.’

‘You can’t.’

‘You can’t what?’

‘Tell them. You cannot tell anyone what it was like. It wasn’t the stuff of words …’ But she told him something anyway, or tried to ... ‘If I were you I’d write a book about your experiences,’ he said.

‘But you’re not, are you? You’re not me.’ And she felt something strange, the sensation of uniqueness. It wasn’t a good feeling, just one of separation, like being unable to speak the language that is common to all those around you.

Fiction is the friend of those us with difficult personal stories by providing a medium through which we can simultaneously reveal and conceal in
a metaphorical telling of what makes us who we are. Through fiction we can repeatedly refine our telling, showing our personal story from different angles and in different moods. For example, the extremely versatile novelist Ann Patchett has said that she writes the “exactly the same book over and over again” perhaps stemming from her childhood experience of being part of a blended family.

While I acknowledge that sharing our untold stories can be therapeutic, I fly the flag for caution. I wonder about the maverick, or perhaps merely uninformed,
creative writing tutor unaware they are playing with fire when they invite new writers to mine their pasts for stories.

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I’m posting this topic now in response to the latest flash fiction prompt to write a 99-word story using the word gander in the sense of looking, rather than as the male goose. I’m interested in what we see when we look deeply into ourselves, and then what we do subsequently with that seeing. My flash is also influenced by musings on how my fear of denial of the darkness can put me out of step with the upbeat climate of the blogosphere, prompted by my response to one of the comments on Charli’s post (and wondering why I hadn’t just let it go).

Mining the past for stories

Donning hard hats, we collected picks and hessian sacks and stepped into the cage. Down it went through the darkness, down and farther down, before jolting to a halt. “Go on,” said the tutor. “Have a gander around. See what you can find.”

The students whooped and giggled as they stuffed their bags with gems and precious metals, and the occasional cuddly toy. “To think we’d find such treasures below the surface of our minds!”

Shivering, hyperventilating, I crouched in the corner of the cage. Out there, for me, all was the deepest black.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
17 Comments
Terry Tyler
12/12/2016 08:53:24 am

I think they key point is the one you made about it being therapeutic. Unless you can write about what you've been through in way that is entertaining for the reader, it might be best left to a personal journal or blog, rather than publishing a book about it. Or weave the experience into fiction, as you've described. Depends if you write for the cathartic experience, or want to sell books. Lots of my personal experience appears in my novels, but I don't imagine anyone would want to read about it if it wasn't part of an otherwise interesting story.

It also depends if you can actually WRITE, by which I mean having the gift of putting sentences together in such a way that people feel compelled to read them. Not everyone has this, whether or not they've lived through experiences others might find fascinating. In which case, they might be best told second or third hand, as you also described above.

Reply
Annecdotist
12/12/2016 03:45:42 pm

Thanks for adding in your perspective, Terry. Your comment makes me think about that overused phrase “everyone has a book in them” – but sometimes it ought to stay there! You’re absolutely right that what’s interesting from the inside won’t necessarily be easy to read about. But I was also thinking about it not necessarily being healthy for the writer to feel “obliged” to put their personal experiences, however interesting, out into the world.

Reply
geoff le pard link
12/12/2016 11:38:53 pm

What a fascinating post. I've never thought too hard about how to filter trauma because, in truth, there's been little enough of it, but, that said, there are things I simply cannot write about anywhere because of the actual or perceived (by me) impact on others involved. I think that's why my parents are essentially fair game to me, both being dead but my brother is still here and so, even here, I critic myself. Sensitivity, embarrassment, sharing what isn't only mine to share - these all play a part. And I've never had the sense of catharsis in writing. In a way, I enjoy the enjoyment others get, the idea that I might be okay as a writer rather than there being some compelling inner need to write. I'm not stopping writing but I suspect it has as much to do with ego and a certain amount of seeking external validation as anything. Does that make me a good subject for a couch somewhere?!!

Reply
Annecdotist
13/12/2016 09:04:59 am

Thanks for bringing your ego here, Geoff. I have to say I love how you write about your parents. As for the couch, I think anyone who’s curious about the workings of their own mind could get something from therapy, but those for whom it causes distress should perhaps be at the front of the queue!

Reply
Sarah link
13/12/2016 04:14:35 am

What Geoff said. Um...except the ego. ;-)

Love the title of this post. Pulled me right in. I cannot (will not, more appropriately) write about certain things because they involve other people. My children are not fair game in my writing. What I have posted (and there's not too much), I've asked them about. Lately, I've just sort of...stopped. My writing doesn't include my life as much now as I'm in the midst of a sticky web of family stuff. I just wrote about this. How I have a personal blog but don't write about deeply personal things. Not that I'm comparing my life to this man's or your conversation. And that excerpt is stunning. I love how you've laid this all out here.

Amazing flash, Anne. Love that.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/12/2016 09:09:03 am

Thanks, Sarah, I admire how you write a personal blog while keeping your privacy and that of your family. I do worry about how some parts of the blogosphere intrude on the lives of children too young to consent. And as for writing about sticky stuff while it’s happening – that’s whiskey. I was thinking about things that are more processed.
I’m interested in how you and Geoff have expressed concerns about protecting other people – I tend to focus on protecting myself!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
13/12/2016 11:30:04 am

Interesting post and comments, Anne. I love the title too, as Sarah says. I sometimes wonder about the opposite. If you haven't lived an interesting life, should you write about it? What's not interesting?Everyone has a story - doesn't mean it would make a good book.
I love your flash. I don't like going into those dark spaces. As for your character, too much unpleasantness awaits. I too would be shivering and hyperventilating. As always, you capture those inner workings well.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/12/2016 04:19:00 pm

Thanks, Norah, I do think some lives are more interesting than others and that’s not always to the benefit of the interesting.
You mentioned my potential for cringing on your blog and I’m now imagining you cringing when I go into those dark spaces. I did think about taking the flash a bit further, but would have overcomplicated it, as I had an image of coal mines, with the concept of coal as “black gold” which is probably more in keeping with how I think of my own darkness.

Reply
Charli Mills
15/12/2016 02:07:15 am

Interesting, and not in the Minnesota-nice sense, but in that it provokes much thought. And here you've already had me thinking on my choice of positivism. Before I put that one to rest, I don't deny the darkness. I see it quite clearly. But I choose to act in a way that I can change for good if only my tiny unimportant part of it.

Thus I'll segue to this topic. Writing is a way to process and I have burned volumes of journals because they helped me better understand my interesting childhood but were not meant for others to read. However, I'm not private. I have no problem writing about sexual abuse if I think there's a purpose to it. Many have said to me, I should write a book about it. No way. My choice. I love writing fiction and probably because I can be free to write what I want, or what interests me, like history. Sure, I probably am always processing interesting life events at some level in fiction, but I get a sense of empowerment to examine the lives of my characters at my own pace. I hope to find something meaningful in the story, in the hero's journey.

"Fiction is the friend of those us with difficult personal stories by providing a medium through which we can simultaneously reveal and conceal in a metaphorical telling of what makes us who we are." Yes. I can reveal and cloak. I can explore, discover and even destroy. However, I think memoirists might have a different take on this topic and I hope perhaps one responds to your post. What you share in your posts and links, I find help me take a gander at my own process and challenge what I think I know about myself and the world through my perspective. Thanks for that.

Your flash clarifies the different experience mining memories can have. A great gander at where we find our material.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/12/2016 09:01:51 am

Thank you, Charli, for adding your own interesting perspective which makes me think further about mine, and especially about the assumptions I brought to this post. One is what we actually mean by “writing” of which there are so many parameters: public versus private, and the intensity and depth. The other is the existence or otherwise of an external shared narrative about the particular type of interesting. In the case of childhood sexual abuse, while each individual has a unique story and bears their pain alone, there’s also a collective narrative so that when an individual speaks or writes about their experience it builds on stories that already exist. There’s also a shared general wish amongst right-thinking people to try to prevent this in future, which makes speaking out more positive as collectively we can learn (or at least try to) from the mistakes of the past. I don’t think that’s the case for all “interesting” stories, but it also gets me wondering how this very private narrative became a public one. At some point it changed from being the survivors’ secret shame to something we might all feel indignant about. Did it became more widely known through survivors speaking about their own experience or others advocating on their behalf, or perhaps a bit of both?
So yes I can understand the positivity of your choice to publicly acknowledge your own abuse but then direct your gaze and creative energy elsewhere – seems healthy to me.
Regarding the positive/negative thing, I fear I’m at risk of denying my own positivity (at least in the blogosphere) because of my own untellable story of darkness denied, but it’s not so good to polarise – most things are shades of grey.
Yes, it’ll be interesting to see what the memoirists think, especially in relation to that sentence you picked out. I imagine we’ll have different points of view.

Reply
Sherri link
22/12/2016 03:17:26 pm

Hi Anne, I have at last had a chance to read your thought-provoking and as always very interesting post and all the interesting comments before I sign off until after the New Year, I feel that we could go onto one of our memoir vs fiction conversations again! I do indeed have a different take coming from a memoirist's point of view. Your flash, powerful, I can understand. But for me, it illustrates perhaps why some of us write memoir and others don't. It's not about the fear of what we might say about other people, or about the darkness. In fact, as a memoirist, I embrace the darkness which makes me think even more so that writing memoir must truly seem like an alien concept to some which intrigues me. That person hiding in the cage seeing nothing but darkness? A memoirist, though scared of the dark, must embrace it, walk through it & ultimately, conquer it. And processing is a huge part of that. It must be what feeds the compulsion to bring the story long hidden out into the daylight to where it belongs as a living, breathing thing. And once there, it takes root in the hearts of others, ofnshared experiences. The nub of story telling. There are many subjects, things that I have experienced, I will not write about. For instance, I had a difficult 22 year long marriage, but it has never occurred to me to write a book about it, and there are many hair curling things I could write, but it is not a story I need to air publicly. Not least of all for my children, despite there being nothing they don't already know anyway. But my memoir is from a time before I had my children, which perhaps is why I can write it. My biggest factor of protection is them, not so much myself. And I agree, just because we think we have an interesting story, does that automatically mean we must write a book about it? My feeling all along, for over 30 years, has been, I have this story to tell, for many reasons (which will only become clear when its written), but when I first thought about writing my book, I thought 'but who on earth would be interested in reading about my meager story? Who am I after all in a world of celebrity?' A nobody, that's who. But a nobody with a story I have permission to mine for because I own it. One that is mine and nobody elses, meaning, I can share it freely because I am not writing to get at anyone, for carthasis, to expose anyone, but to write a true story from my perspective, from my experience and to unravel the threads of my own life that lead to the hub of the story, even though, essentially, the story is also about somebody else whose story would otherwise lie buried. On my blog I never share anything about my children that they haven't given me permission to do, and that is why I don't write much about my youngest lately, for their privacy reasons. I barely scratch the surface with the things I reveal, about my dad especially. And not because it's all bad, far from it. But because it is not time and even then, there are things from my family life that I will never reveal publicly. Charli best described her reasons why she shares about the sexual abuse she suffered but why she chooses to do so. As Mary Karr writes in the Art of Memoir, I am that memorist who is stumbling about in the dark cellar, reaching out for that rail, looking for the truth, asking questions, always asking questions, wanting to walk into the darkness and find the answers. And writing flash fiction is a great exercise for me, because I often do use true stories to embellish, yet I find the ones I can let rip with the best are those that are completely made up. Perhaps it is suffering trauma early in life that compels some of us to write memoir. I read once, interestingly, that a high proportion of memorists had an absent father in their early lives. Wish I could remember where I read that. I don't know how true that is, but food for thought. Ultimately, I write my memoir not because anybody suggested I do so, but because it's my choice, my story, and because I know I have the right to tell it, with conviction. There is a huge difference between airing the family's dirty laundry and writing memoir structured around its art form and genre, and mining for those nuggets of the real story in that dark, dank cave, alone and with nobody to guide me but myself as I write, has, and continues to be, a revelation, even at a cost. The cost being, as Mary Karr states in her book, writing memoir is like punching yourself in the face. Crazy. But there it is. So I'll keep mining, but I'll keep my hard hat firmly in place, and I'll know I've done a good day's work. At least, I hope so! Thanks again Anne for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts here on your blog. Until we catch up again, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/12/2016 06:41:30 pm

Thank you, Sherri, for sharing so much of yourself and your thinking in this post. I did wonder what you’d think and so appreciate your generosity in giving it so much time. I do find our differences interesting and also wonder if we’d find more similarities if we had the opportunity to talk about them face-to-face, although neither of us are going to change our preferences.
I’m glad you found my flash powerful, but I didn’t actually mean it as a message NOT to explore the darkness, only that it’s important to tread carefully, especially when encouraging others to explore their depths, as it might turn out to be darker than we expect and it might be risky to find ourselves down there without a competent guide, or at least a torch. Like you, I’ve embraced my darkness and made peace with it, but I wouldn’t say I’ve conquered it because I don’t think my experience is something that CAN be conquered. I’d much prefer it hadn’t happened but I’ve certainly made it mine. For me, making it generally public would actually detract from that, so I find interesting – if I’ve understood you correctly – that you think sharing your story would be the resolution.
There’s also a view that unhappy childhoods and early trauma is what drives many of us to fiction. I think there’s a common desire approaching a need to have others bear witness to our untold stories. Depending on the nature of the story – and, as you say, being a memoirist doesn’t mean sharing everything – I think it’s safer for some to be translated fiction or confined to therapy.
Anyway, thanks again for sharing and I’m sure we’ll touch on this topic again! Hope you have a wonderful holiday and catch up again in the New Year.

Reply
Charli Mills
24/12/2016 10:04:11 pm

Anne and Sherri, this is such good discussion. It's often difficult to articulate why we write and unusual to have cross genre discussions like this. I find it enlightening and it gives me new thoughts to consider. Thanks for coming over to offer a memorial point of view, Sherri! It also makes me think more deeply about memoir versus personal essay. I like what you have to say about owning your story and recognizing which stories to tell, which to protect and the importance of considering your children's privacy.

Annecdotist
27/12/2016 11:13:00 am

Thanks for adding that, Charli. But memoir versus personal essay? That’s a whole other dimension of story for me!

Sherri Matthews link
6/1/2017 05:50:41 pm

Hello Anne, sorry for taking so long to reply to your reply! I'm barely emerging since Christmas, and not back to blogging proper, but I did want to catch up at the Ranch and here in light of our ongoing discussion! As you say, it would be very interesting to talk about this face face - maybe Charli could start a sort of Ranch skyping session one of these days, or whatever it is that groups do online! It is very interesting what you say about fiction writers and past trauma in early childhood. And I can see how we differ about the sharing of certain stories with the general public, but again, I do think it comes down to that story we choose to write in the first place, and the way we 'own' it. But there are definitely some we don't want to put out there and I am glad you are happy keeping your story just where it is. It's interesting as even in a blog post, there have been a few times when I've thought of sharing something, a memoir story as I do, but have thought better of it. If there is just that tiniest of glimmer of doubt, I have learned to listen to it. And I have been glad every time to have listened, as it was not the right story at the right time for various reasons. With my memoir though, I have never wavered from the story. Great chatting with you Anne, and look forward to many more conversations as I'm sure we'll have as time goes on! I'll be back soon and hope 2017 so far is being kind to you.

Annecdotist
10/1/2017 10:39:34 am

No problem, Sherri, and glad you enjoyed your Christmas break. I appreciate you taking the time and the thoughtfulness of your reply.
One line that stands out for me is
I do think it comes down to that story we choose to write in the first place, and the way we 'own' it
which raises lots of questions. Are you saying that some personal stories are more suitable for memoir than fiction? Also this concept of owning one’s story is something I am still struggling to grasp from the memoirist interview. Irene has tried to explain this to me before but I’m not sure I follow. Is writing about an experience a way of owning it (and one of several different routes) or do you mean that you are compelled to write about it in order to own it?
But I won’t go back to the original point of my post which wasn’t that we should censor ourselves from telling our interesting stories either through fiction or memoir, but that some of us might want to guard against “gosh what an interesting experience” as a motivation to write for publication. I’m concerned about protecting ourselves from potentially painful aspects of the people’s interest in our stories. I imagine you’d agree with that given what you say about holding back on some aspects of your personal history but feeling committed to the memoir you’ve chosen to write. It’s so interested in discussing it with you although I’m not sure we’ll ever understand our differences. Wishing you a productive New Year.

Sherri link
6/1/2017 05:54:32 pm

Thanks Charli, I'm glad you've found mine and Anne's discussion enlightening! Anne makes me think hard about this subject, and I am always fascinated by the psychology behind any story or the writing of and her explanations. As for memoir vs personal essay, I would definitely like to explore that more! A challenge for us all, it seems!

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