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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

I’m not telling you

19/6/2018

8 Comments

 
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I’m in a children’s playground, awaiting my turn at the top of the slide. I sit, push off with my hands, and down I go. Wheeeee! There’s no-one to catch me at the bottom, but that’s okay. I sit and wait, scanning the faces of the grown-ups, wondering which one of them will come and claim me. It’s only as the light begins to fade that I get nervous. As the metal beneath my buttocks cools. That’s when I realise no-one’s coming, and get up to wander alone through the world.

This episode came to me the way my stories sometimes do: vivid, urgent and determined to be told. But this wasn’t fiction. This was a
metaphor for the origins of me.

I’m shaped by the manner in which my arrival in the world was nothing special, by being a baby left to cry. It’s what made me a psychologist and a writer but, for far too much of my life, it made me timid, prone to black moods and much better at intuiting the minds of others than my own.
 
Therapy – and an awful lot of it – has largely taken care of that, as well as supporting me to embark on the emotionally-risky journey towards becoming a published writer. But, despite the clichés of psychoanalytic symbolism for the sex organs and birth canal, when I first related to the above story to my therapist, neither of us recognised what we subsequently agreed it was about. When we did, it opened doors to a deeper understanding of my character, and gave me an opportunity to grieve for a part of my personal story that’s beyond conscious memory.

So if pushed to identify the experiences that made me who I am, I’d probably say the dynamics of my birth family and therapy (which I might say was like being reborn if it didn’t evoke that primal scream nonsense from the 70s). But there’s another episode in between: my ticket into therapy which I don’t talk about or write about except in heavily disguised form.
 
If my life were a ribbon, it would be more colourful at the end with a tight knot a quarter of the way in. If my life were a railway, it would be shunted onto another track before the journey had properly got going, emerging through tunnels into postcard scenery later on. I’m
happy and, while it doesn’t dilute my happiness, or not much, my loyalty to my private trauma can be awkward at times.

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My preferred balance between revealing and concealing doesn’t seem to chime with contemporary social mores. While it’s great that there’s so much support for those who want to reveal their wounds, the expectation of openness can make me appear coy.
 
I’m walking with a friend when she comments on the energy and exuberance of a group of young people nearby. I smile and walk on. She mentions it again with a subtext that we oldies must envy them and mourn our lost youth. I do have a choice about whether to speak or stay quiet, but it’s touched a raw spot within me that I don’t want to stifle. So I say it wasn’t like that for me, that I feel much fitter and freer now. Not unreasonably, she asks what happened. “I don’t talk about it,” I say.
 
I feel I’ve been rude, invited a visitor to my home and kept her on the doorstep, but what’s the alternative? What happened isn’t secret, but there’s no shorthand that would enable me to refer to it without feeling like I’m sticking my fingers into an open wound. I could keep it totally private, never refer to its existence, but it’s a poor form of protection that involves wearing a gag.
 
My dilemma feels magnified in the blogosphere where, while we must all protect our personal boundaries, a degree of disclosure forges connections across distance, genre and style. But I sometimes experience a kind of culture shock in my interactions with memoirists, despite our shared objectives of crafting our stories in an engaging way.


If memoirists are willing to try their hands at fiction, shouldn’t fiction writers return the favour and compose a mini memoir now and then? While I’ve enjoyed some of Irene Waters’ Times Past prompts, I know that memoir will never be for me. The elephant I don’t write about takes up far too much space in the non-fiction room, leaving little of interest I can address comfortably and, besides, the weight of it flattens my words.
 
But somehow I can’t sit politely on the sidelines, awaiting a more congenial dance. Sometimes I manage to follow the rhythms of memoir; sometimes I have to barge in with steps that don’t fit. To assert that
I disagree that sharing a story publicly is always liberating; or that such sharing is necessary or even desirable to take ownership of our pasts.
 
And
I’ve done it again this week, although I’ve also exposed my own narcissism by making this post more personal than the dance dictates. When Irene asks What’s the biggest changes seen in your lifetime? she meant in the world beyond my skin.

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But, in answering her question as it was intended, all this preamble won’t go amiss. Sure, I’ve seen technological change, especially the marvel of the internet that brings you this post. I’ve seen political change, and not for the better, with even supposed left-wing governments indifferent to the widening gap between rich and poor. I’ve seen reason defeat religion in some quarters, with a welcome endorsement of women’s reproductive rights.
 
The change I want to celebrate is increased emotional literacy and openness about mental illhealth, especially among the young. Sure, I might quibble with some of the interpretations – such as the notion that thinking positive is preferable to
embracing both light and dark – and struggle personally with some of the implications – as outlined above – but it’s a vast improvement on my youth in the 60s and 70s.

Back then, those who hurt the vulnerable were rarely challenged, except in extreme cases, while the victims shouldered the shame. Now there are safeguarding staff in schools. (In schools! Those institutions created to control the progeny of the working class!) Yes, far too many slip through the net, but at least a net exists.


Another bouquet takes me back to home territory and this week’s
flash fiction prompt. Despite my preference fiction over memoir, it wasn’t easy to find my 99-word story. I’ve borrowed a thread from last week’s man glisten, in a celebration of the therapy with which I began this post.

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Thank you flowers

Tulips blooming in buckets outside the florist’s. Should I? Or would it look cheap? The entire stock can’t repay what he’s given me; besides, women don’t buy men flowers.

I walk on. Walk back. Something exotic, like an orchid? Something simple, like a single white rose?

He’d like a bouquet, he’s a sharp-suited metrosexual. He’d be embarrassed, faffing about for a vase. Or worse, he’d interpret it, force it to mean something more.

Squirming like a kid, I hold out the foxgloves, scabious and daisies scavenged from the waste ground. Rather like myself. “Thank you,” he says. And smiles.


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.
8 Comments
Norah Colvin link
20/6/2018 06:23:55 am

Hi Anne, That's a very personal post for you. It makes me feel so sad that there was no one at the slide to catch you. That it's a metaphor for your origin, makes me even sadder. You have done well to find those who would catch you should you need it now. Your metaphors with the knot and the train journey are also very effective and emotive. I agree with much of what you say about memoir. I'm not into sticking fingers into wounds either. It's just too painful.
But I do like your flash, and especially your bouquet. It's the type I was looking for and failed to find. Maybe because it's winter over here - or was that lack just in my mind? It can be difficult to say "thank you" to a man. But why shouldn't flowers do as well? Don't we want equality? Perhaps that's a good change.
Thanks for your post. I'll be thinking (and feeling) on it for a while.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/6/2018 09:03:48 am

Thank you, Norah. I imagine this post being quite difficult to respond to, so extra appreciation of your contribution.
It is unusually personal for me, although I think there are plenty of hints of this stuff in other posts. When I realised, halfway through writing it, that I’d misinterpreted Irene’s prompt, I wondered about scrapping it, but I’d had so many thoughts I didn’t want to waste (though most didn’t make it into sentences) and was pleased with the way the text was shaping up. I imagine that unconsciously I was waiting for the opportunity to write this. Also, I realise from the developing discussion arising from Irene’s latest post on Carrot Ranch that I’m coming to this issue of memoir with totally different assumptions from most, which might account for the occasional sparring. Perhaps it’s helpful to set out my stall.
Yes, the opening paragraph is sad but not as sad in my opinion as having a general sense of being wrong/inadequate with no idea where it comes from. I worked hard, as did my therapist, to arrive at this understanding and found it liberating. Of course there are other possible interpretations, and anything with its foundations in early childhood can only be provisional, but this is extremely functional for me.
I’m glad you liked the flash. Yours is very different but also very effective.

Reply
Charli Mills
21/6/2018 08:49:50 am

Anne, I rather prefer that you wrote about the changes within your skin because it was more memoir-like than witnessing technology or social change, and you did it well within the boundaries you've set. The image of you as a girl waiting at the bottom of the slide seems to be a great jumping off point for fiction writing -- you can feel what the loss is, convey it and be free to explore the greater dynamics of human interaction. Your flash tidies up with a bouquet of acceptance.

Reply
Annecdotist
21/6/2018 10:24:32 am

Thanks, Charli. I think we’ve speculated before on the point at which a memory and/or personal story becomes memoir or fiction, depending on the preferences of the writer. My story of the girl on the slide doesn’t feel like a jumping off point for fiction but further down the line. I think I’d already addressed the theme in fiction a fair bit.
Perhaps there’s more back and forth between fiction and personal insight. A theme might arise unconsciously to drive a fictional story, which might then bring new understanding of ourselves, which feeds into the next fiction etc etc. In that way, our personal story is constantly developing, whereas with memoir, despite being more personal on the surface, it’s more static, as I imagine it’s harder to return to the theme of the books published.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
24/6/2018 11:02:12 am

Interesting discussion on memoir, fiction, and personal perspectives and understanding. What a tangled web we weave, or unravel, in the telling of our stories, fact or fiction.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/6/2018 02:13:52 pm

Maybe we weave and unravel simultaneously, revealing and conceding in equal measure.

Reply
Irene Waters link
26/6/2018 01:31:07 pm

Thank you for sharing your metaphors for your very personal story. I must admit I was blown away by your response to this prompt Anne and was sorry that I could not respond due to techno difficulties when I first read it. A view into Anne has never been a place I expected to see and the metaphors you used were powerful. There are places I don't go and certainly don't write about unless it comes out in some way in a piece of fiction and I appreciate you not wanting to go there. I try and make these prompts as neutral as I can for that reason - I have no desire to dredge up bad experiences for anyone particularly as these can happen when the person is alone with no support. I don't however believe that writing about yourself display a narcissistic persona - we all tell our stories and I believe that is how our identity is formed. We tell the stories we want to tell in order to be the person we want to be and this is a basic element of being human. Someone suggested that telling your life story is as necessary for survival as pH and temperature control. You write fiction with a fictional story. These may have some roots in your past but the story remains fiction. The stories I believe we should own are those that are our memoir in entirety but the writer claims they are fiction. Perhaps those stories don't fit with the identity the writer wants to have. I may not have understood part of your comment to Charli but I would probably argue that memoir is static. There are memoirs ( those I know of are all slave narratives) written of the same time by the same person but in each one the story is different yet all true. This is because of changes in culture and society and what is acceptable and what is not within that society. If a series of memoirs are written, because as you say our personal story is always evolving, it is possible that the narrated I character is different between memoir and may not be liked by the narrator or by the readership. Where in fiction a similar audience may read all of an author's writings, in memoir they may enjoy one and hate the rest. So in that regard I think that perhaps fiction is often more static than memoir. I am rambling as I tend to do. Thank you for joining in with a poignant glimpse into your childhood and a change that needs more work but as you say at least now there is a net. Your flash was beautiful.

Reply
Annecdotist
26/6/2018 04:00:43 pm

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Irene. I know that you don’t intend your prompts as an invitation to bare all but to invite writers to play with a genre which is so dear to your heart. I think my narcissism is evident in my interpretation therefore, in putting myself in the centre of a story that you clearly perceived as neutral. But I decided to “go where the prompt leads” as Charli says of the flash fiction challenge.

Interesting points about the slave narratives. I imagine if someone has written a personal account of a social issue it might be read differently if/when the culture changes, providing an opportunity to revisit the same biographical events with a different slant when the climate might be more sympathetic. I don’t know if anyone’s actually done it, but perhaps the same could happen in contemporary times with memoirs about sexuality and gender diversity. Perhaps more, or different things, can be flagged up when mainstream society moves on. As you said in your piece on carrot ranch, it’s about knowing your audience. (I think there’s a similar issue in fiction in being aware of potential differences between what you know as the author and what the reader is likely to think.)

But that must cover just a small proportion of topics for memoir – many won’t be a social/cultural exemplar and in that sense I think the writer has only one opportunity to tell the story. Also, the point in my reply to Charli about the unconscious influences on fiction might not be present in memoir – or would you say differently? – so the writer might not develop so much in relation to her material.

I think we agree about the importance of generating stories about ourselves but perhaps disagree about whether they need to be shared and how much? The safe space required for some kinds of personal stories might not exist outside of therapy.
Also I wasn’t sure about your statement:
We tell the stories we want to tell in order to be the person we want to be
I wouldn’t agree we can always be the person we want to be but I do think it’s helpful to accept the person we are, although I also agree we have multiple selves, which might be part of my motivation for sharing what I did in this post because, like it or not, this is who I am.

Thanks again for the time you’ve given this. Intriguing to discuss as always. I might shut up about it now!

Reply

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