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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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School at seven: Lisa’s bite-sized memoir challenge

7/5/2014

19 Comments

 
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For someone who considers herself averse to memoir, I’ve been edging perilously close to it of late.  Memoir was what drew me into taking part in Charli’s flash fiction challenge although, like several other participants, I chose to produce a memoir for a fictional character rather than myself.  Then I hosted a post from an actual published memoirist: a beautifully moving piece from Janet Watson on the process of rediscovering her teenage self in order to let it go.  When Lisa Reiter launched her bite-sized memoir challenge, I didn’t think I’d be joining in.  Yet School at Seven got me thinking about my first best friend, and he wouldn’t go away:

My First Best Friend

We sat side-by-side at the front of Mrs B’s classroom.  Together we learnt cross-stitch and joined-up writing, drank stove-warmed milk from a squat glass bottle through a paper straw.  Together we held out trembling hands as our teacher progressed from child to child, brandishing a wooden ruler.  Together we progressed from Blue Book 1 all the way to Blue Book 6.

On Saturday afternoons I’d ride over to his house to watch Batman and Robin dispatch the villains of Gotham city on his black-and-white TV.  On Sunday mornings we’d seek each other out at church.

I thought we’d be best friends forever, until the day he biked round to my house with another bunch of friends.  Boys, every one of them.  I stayed in my garden, watching till they rode away.

In the end, I enjoyed this exercise and was happy with what I produced.  Yet where it’s been most helpful is not so much in converting me to memoir, but in nudging me a little further towards formulating my reservations about the form. 

Good writing relies on specifics: a crimson tulip rather than a red flower; a curly-haired Bedlington Terrier rather than a medium-sized dog.  In writing fiction, we can choose our details to fit with a picture in our head, to suit the rhythm of the prose or to mirror an underlying theme.  In writing memoir, we’re supposed to stick with the facts.  Janet Watson had her teenage diaries to guide her but, more than twenty years on, they wouldn’t tell her everything she needed to know to complete her book.  Even in my short piece of under 150 words, I’m conscious of gaps in my memory, points where I may have strayed from the truth.  I feel uneasy that I might be wrong about the year we learnt joined-up writing, and it’s only an assumption that back in 1965 my friend didn’t have a colour TV.  I’m not even sure he was my first best friend.  It could be I’m unsuited to memoir because I’m too uptight about these minor details, or too lazy to undertake the meticulous research needed to check them out.

Charli Mills wrote that a memory can send a writer down one of two paths: fiction or memoir.  I’d love to know what makes some of us prefer one path to the other.  On her blog, Writing My Novel, Teagan Kearney wrote recently on the virtues of fiction and mentioned her surprise at discovering that a friend couldn’t read novels because she was unable to suspend disbelief.  I also have a good friend who doesn’t get fiction but the idea is so alien to me we’d been friends for around twenty years before I was aware of it.  However this friend does enjoy memoir, which strengthens my belief that some people are more suited to one than the other.

I’m hoping to discover more about this preference for fact versus fiction as the memoir challenge continues, although I can’t guarantee I’ll join in next time.
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.
19 Comments
Norah Colvin link
7/5/2014 04:26:38 am

Hi Anne, Thanks for sharing this memory, and your reflections on writing memoir. I think that the details in a memoir don't need to be exactly correct, but how one remembers them, but that the details in a biography need to be accurate. Therefore the matters about which you express uncertainty are not really important. I love the memoir. It reads very well and is an interesting reflection on childhood friendships and growing up.

Reply
Lisa Reiter link
7/5/2014 07:56:26 am

Delighted you've had a go with such a lovely piece. I would echo Norah's view that memoir should be honest reflection although not needing the accuracy of detailed, recorded truths as an autobiography does. I might answer this more comprehensively in an aside when there's chance!

Reply
Annecdotist
7/5/2014 08:24:57 am

Thank you, both, for the kind words and clarification. Nevertheless, I'm still bemused by the decision point: biography? memoir? fiction? and why some of us feel more attuned to one path than the others. Look forward to further enlightenment, especially if you do a post on it, Lisa ;)

Reply
Lena Ray link
7/5/2014 09:44:19 am

The idea of memories: what we remember, why and how it shifts and changes over time fascinates me. Recollections aren't precise...and different people remember things differently without necessarily being wrong. It's taken me a long time to realize how perception and experiences influence memory, but this has made me more interested in the art of memoir...without losing my love for fiction. Thanks for a great post: looking forward to hearing more thoughts on the subject!

Reply
Annecdotist
8/5/2014 03:11:38 am

Thanks, Lena. I'm with you on the fascination of memory – our brains are much more than a recording device.
Do you think you'll join in Lisa's challenge?

Reply
Janet Watson
7/5/2014 11:18:41 am

I enjoyed your piece Anne. And it struck me how - as you say - we are drawn in by the detail. I was there with the warm milk and the blue reading books and the pang I experienced when the gang of boys stole the best friend away was stringer than I would have expected from so few words.
I see a memoir as a series of tableaux, like scenes in a film, brought to life with just a few details and creating a context for the story. An exercise well worth doing... time for more??

Reply
Annecdotist
8/5/2014 03:14:27 am

Thanks, Janet, glad the piece was evocative for you. I often think of fiction as a series of scenes too. I'm curious to see how Lisa's project develops but I think I'll be standing on the sidelines more often than joining in. Fiction feels a whole lot safer to me!

Reply
geoff le pard link
8/5/2014 03:39:51 am

Great piece. I think, being given the role of milk monitor, handing out the bottles of milk, was the start of my becoming a creature of the establishment. In fact I suspect it was because i was one of the few pupils strong enough to help carry the crate. I also remember the jealousy I felt at Angela who had apple juice instead of milk because of an allergy. The temptation to steal that little green topped bottle was so strong.
My uncle had a way with memory that was described by my grandma as 'elaborate'. He never really let the absolute truth get in the way of a good story, nor he felt should a good story remain immutable if time and his imagination might improve it. So, down the years the actual truth and indeed family memory became blurred into a more complicated porridge of the half remembered and the mostly created. Fiction and memoire combined to make him more interesting to others. I often feel my writing owes at lot to my Uncle Ted.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/5/2014 04:59:53 am

Thanks for commenting, Geoff. I think you're going to have to add milk monitor to your bio or blog About page if it's had such an effect.
Regarding your uncle, I think all good raconteurs have a flexible attitude to the truth. Many of our everyday stories benefit from embellishment.

Reply
Charli Mills link
8/5/2014 09:34:38 am

Fiction filled my life along with the daily facts that unfolded--I loved to read, to play imaginary games and make up stories about the people buried in the abandoned cemetery above town. The last one sounds creepy, but really I was just thirsty-curious to know about their lives. I also want to know why people do certain things or why denial is easier than truth. Somehow, fiction has let me explore this soup-pot of ideas and at least come up with some possible conclusions. Memoir has seemed to factual and I muddy up the facts with my own memory gaps. But I found that I could write creatively about the few facts and the one strong memory I had at age seven. Also, I;m so intrigued by Jane Watson's memoir and how she processed it thru interviews and journals as well as her own recollections. Anne, I enjoyed this memoir, and the crush of losing a boy to the other boys. My best friend was my cousin Mitch and to this day, I still feel sad for when he decided he had to play with boys, not his girl-cousin. You always stimulate great discussion!

Reply
Annecdotist
9/5/2014 05:03:24 am

Thanks, Charli. Regarding cemeteries, I certainly enjoy moseying around them nowadays, especially the old parts, but can't remember doing so as a child. But given the uncertainty of memories, you might find me in a few months time reminiscing about doing exactly that!
Thanks for sharing.

Reply
Susan link
8/5/2014 11:30:54 am

I liked your piece, Anne. The last paragraph sang out! I read more fiction by far but always assume that there's a degree of fiction in memoirs anyway partly, as you say, thanks to our faulty memories, partly through a need to put the best case for ourselves, more so, I suspect, in the case of public figures. As to why fiction or memoir - I'm not at all sure but it's an interesting question.

Reply
Annecdotist
9/5/2014 05:05:38 am

Thanks, Susan. It's funny about the ending of this story, which seems to have resonated quite a few people, including Charli in the comment above. Yet I didn't link it with the earlier parts until writing this, and I'm still not sure how much is fictionalised, although I do remember not being happy when the boys all turned up on their bikes.

Reply
Teagan Kearney link
8/5/2014 12:18:38 pm

Your memoir is an evocative one, Anne, and despite being bite-sized conveyed the world of emotions that your 7 year old self experienced.
I also wonder about what I call received memories - being told you did something as a child, which then creates a picture, posing the difficulty that each time you think of that incident, you reinforce that image, making if all the more impossible to separate truth from fiction.
But I'm like you - not attracted to memoir - I'm sure a psychoanalyst would have great fun unpicking my reasons, but as far as my life goes, I'm drawn to the future far more than the past; and as far as memoir or fiction goes - my vote's for fiction!
And thank you so much for the honorary mention - it's genuinely appreciated! :))

Reply
Annecdotist
9/5/2014 05:13:14 am

Thanks, Teagan, I do appreciate your dropping by and leaving a comment.
I'm not up-to-date on the research, but there's quite a bit nowadays that shows that it's possible to implant false memories, even in a laboratory situation, so it's quite likely that some of our earlier memories aren't totally accurate. But that doesn't mean they don't reflect something important about ourselves. Lisa has started her project with memories from age 7 onwards because they're likely to be more reliable from that age.
Hope will have opportunities to explore these themes further through our various blogs. Great to link up.

Reply
Rebecca Holmes - Quiet Writer
24/5/2014 10:47:16 am

Interesting reflections, Ann. I tend to use memories as a starting point for fiction, probably because they give colour as well as ideas. And I remember watching Batman and Robin on a black and white TV, as well as the bottles of milk - though ours was always cold in winter and I got stomach ache from drinking it too fast. Me and the boy I sat next to used to race each other to see who could drink theirs faster!

And thanks for the point about detail - crimson tulip rather than red flower etc. I so often have to pick myself up on those. It's the little details that add so much.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/5/2014 01:12:33 pm

Thanks for reading and sharing your memories, seems quite an overlap with mine.
One of my difficulties with detail is not always knowing the name for things – another advantage of fiction over memoir is that we can substitute the varieties that we can name, although I find I have to watch for repetition, have discussed elsewhere how I tend to have a disproportionate number of characters with red hair.

Reply
Paula link
16/7/2014 01:49:48 pm

Someday I am going to do a real post about this; it's fertile material. But time hasn't been on my side for heavy duty reflection these days. I do want at least to refer you all to an essay that has been of profound help to me on this score, by one of Minnesota's premiere memoir writers, Patricia Hampl: https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/1971/Cayer-Hampl%2520Essay.pdf. Especially, Anne, because you worried about misremembering things. She addresses the fact and meaning of that - and what happens when our imagination steps in - very well.

Reply
Annecdotist
17/7/2014 10:43:50 am

Thanks for the link, Paula. Will look this one up. I think, however, memoir isn't for me as the stuff I might be prepared to write about doesn't interest me enough and the stuff that makes my toes curl I wouldn't write about. But will be really interested in what you have to say on the topic if/when you find the headspace.

Reply



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