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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

The stories we choose: high jinks and travel horrors

13/5/2014

31 Comments

 
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Well, the challenges are mounting: the prompts for 99-word flash fiction are announced on Wednesdays and bite-sized memoir every Friday afternoon. This week it’s travel horrors for flash and childhood jinks and japes for memoir – or is it the other way around? My secret¹ ambition is to write a piece that satisfies both simultaneously but, until I get there, I’m making do with incorporating my separate responses into the one post; it gives me another excuse for navel-gazing on the writing process from memory to memoir or not.

Time was when I loved to travel, although now I much prefer to stay at home. But I have lots of cherished memories; I even have a stack of travel diaries I could use to check my facts. Charli’s prompt sparked off a stream of reminiscence, of thrills and spills and moments of, if not quite terror, some pretty dodgy stuff. Were I better raconteur, my travels would make for some great dinner-table storytelling, but my adventures have made only a rare appearance in my fiction and, when they did, I got confused as to what was memory and what imagination. When it came to my 99-words I was overwhelmed with possibilities, yet none seemed strong enough to demand their moment on the screen.

Charli²: But it’s fiction, you’re allowed to make things up!

Annecdotist: Yeah, but somehow I don’t want to this time; I want a story that stays faithful to the things I’ve seen and done.

Lisa²: Ha ha, you’re being converted to memoir.

Annecdotist: Only for this particular topic.

In the end, an idea bubbled to the surface and I grabbed it before it could sink back down again and another take its place. I don’t know why it chose me, but here it is:

I was scared as you were, believe me, but I smothered my anxieties with thoughts of tulips, van Gogh and canals as we bedded down with the down-and-outs in a dusky recess of the shopping mall.

A perfect plan in daylight: a lift halfway to Amsterdam. We’d pass the early hours in the waiting room and catch the first train out. No-one mentioned that the station closed its doors at night.

The police beamed torchlight across our faces. I thought they might relax the rules for two sisters, strangers to the city, but they ushered us into the night.

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Lisa’s challenge was difficult in a different way: if you saw the pic of my sweet book about Jesus, you might begin to appreciate that I wasn’t a kid who went in for high jinks. But my childhood wasn’t entirely goodness and guilt; even I had my moments:

In exchange for half a crown³, she handed over the leather bridle and we trooped off to the field. We positioned ourselves with outstretched arms and edged towards the pony, clicking our tongues and crooning, “Come on, Champ.” He broke through our ranks a couple of times, but we caught him in the end.

I wasn’t brave enough to slip-slide downhill on his back but, once on the flat, I had my turn.

Beyond the harbour, families were sunning themselves on the rocky beach. With nothing else by way of entertainment, the kids began queueing for a ride. At sixpence a go, it wasn’t long before we were in profit. Enough for ice creams all round and to repeat the exercise next day.

Back at the farmhouse, she snatched the bridle from us. We couldn’t understand why she told us never to come for Champ again.

I was struck by how different it felt to write these two pieces and curious as to whether you think that’s reflected in differences the quality of what I’ve produced. Once I’d picked my topic, I found the second one much easier to write. Of course, having 150 words to play with is bound to feel less pressured after the discipline of reducing the first to 99. But I also felt less invested in the pony-ride story and less concerned about making every word count.

I was surprised at how disturbed I felt while writing the first piece (though perhaps I should reassure you that nothing untoward – beyond lack of sleep – happened to us that night). I feel the travel-flash is the better piece of writing but I’m also aware that, because of my deeper emotional involvement, it’s much more difficult for me to be objective about this one: it might be absolute tosh.

I’m interested in my determination to hang on to the first ten words, especially as my original version was about eleven words over the limit and I could have saved myself a bit work by chopping the opening. It’s not essential to the story, yet crucial to the memory that sparked it … and my residual guilt. It seems to me that the fiction writer needs to be able to let go of her story much more than the memoirist, to allow it to exist as something separate from herself. I don’t think I managed that here.

I don’t think there’s any harm in being emotionally affected by one’s own writing – and I think this can happen when writing fiction as much as memoir – but we also need the capacity to step back from it in order to edit and improve. I’m guessing such emotional distancing would be harder to achieve with memoir, but perhaps not for those who have a stronger affinity for the genre?

¹Okay, not secret any more.

²Fictional characters who, by sheer coincidence, have the same names as the bloggers who set these challenges.

³An obsolete British coin to the value of five times sixpence.

What do you do when you have a surfeit of ideas? How do you choose which stories you want to tell? How do you think your emotional involvement impacts on the quality of the writing?

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.
31 Comments
geoff le Pard link
13/5/2014 03:39:27 am

If I had to chose it would be the travel horror. It has an edge that this reader wants to take forward. How do I select? I'm not sure but maybe my career has helped making instant an intuitive decisions on what seem like big choices. As to the emotional piece Lisa's memoir challenge has opened up all sorts. In response to my post my brother told me when he was banned from Weston super Mare. That was a surprise. Keep the thoughts coming Anne.

Reply
Annecdotist
13/5/2014 08:34:12 am

Thanks, Geoff, happy with a response based on intuition. Sometimes we just have to go with what we feel.
Impressed with your brother's achievement – banned from Weston-super-Mare! Look forward to discovering more.

Reply
Lisa Reiter link
13/5/2014 02:05:14 pm

This is a really interesting debate, Anne. I’m sure we all feel differently, but stopping to consider why this might be is both intriguing and valuable.
Not being exactly experienced with fiction, it is hard for me to weigh an argument, but surely the effort to craft the words is directly affected by the motivation to write. I really appreciate your efforts with the memoir, as the challenge of making something up is of perhaps more intellectual interest? Whatever, it's clearly where you find your joy. I hope I will, in time, test myself properly with fiction - it is after all, my preferred reading!
Meanwhile, I can only hold an informed view on the process of writing one memoir. I am quite personally motivated to write the truths of parts of my life for perhaps unusual and complex reasons - and then, rather than simply dump it on the page as facts, do love to craft the words to convey the emotion and subtle nuances. I hope it is still succinct and that every word counts. There are terribly boring memoirs that fail to move the reader. For me their often rambling communication of facts, fails to convey memory, as it is emotion I want to share - but then I want to bleed all over the paper ! I don't see the point in sharing my story so publicly if the reader doesn't feel a little of what I did - for then what is the point? What can you learn or understand? How can my experience benefit anyone without that?
When I do get to fiction, I imagine it will be my experiences and emotions, people I have encountered, insights etc that would influence what I write, as I would still be communicating something from within.
The two therefore don’t seem too different to me, although there is one critical difference, as one requires a comfort with personal unveiling.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
14/5/2014 06:43:55 am

I love the way you have described memoir here Lisa. I would rather be moved by the emotion of the memories than be bored by a factual recount any day. It is the person and their responses (emotions, thoughts and feelings) we want to get to know, not the dates and events. I would have found learning history in school much more fascinating if it had really been his story or her story rather than boring dates and events. I might even have remembered some of it!

Reply
Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:28:08 am

I love that you've commented on Lisa's and Charli's comments, Norah, and I'm with you on his story and her story rather than history.

Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:25:34 am

Perhaps they are not so very different, Lisa, I don't know. Certainly, fiction isn't an intellectual exercise for me at all, it's a very emotional way of making sense of my experiences of the world. I guess there are boring novels as well as boring memoirs and I'm sure both require the ability to go beyond the personal experience to engage with the reader. One of the things I like about fiction, and would trouble me with memoir, is when readers find things in it I didn't think were there, so that it becomes their experience not mine. anyway, looking forward to discovering more about your writing process.

Reply
Charli Mills link
16/5/2014 05:04:37 pm

That's an interesting comment, Anne, about readers who find something in what they read, thus it becomes their experience. I think that's an inherent part of reading. However, one thing I've keenly noticed since reading contributions to Lisa's Bite Size Memoirs is that my first reaction to someone's memory is a recalled memory of my own. I can understand that such a reaction can be more uncomfortable when what the writer has penned is true.

Annecdotist
17/5/2014 06:03:38 am

It was something that struck me quite strongly, Charli, in my Q&A with Shelley Harris who said there are so many things in a text which you produce unconsciously, or are interpreted plurally by readers http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/shelley-harris.html.
And I've had the same experience as you describe with the Bite-Size Memoirs.
Given that a lot of my writing stems from areas of vulnerability, I think I'd find it difficult to expose myself and tolerate the reader forming opinions that strongly conflict with my own. However, in fiction this feels more than fine, it feels like an achievement to have enabled this to happen.

Charli Mills link
13/5/2014 08:54:02 pm

I knew I'd return to the digital world to find some intelligent conversation! I've been hanging out with grad students and professors the past two days debating the relevance of literature with journalists.

Even journalist (just the facts, nothing but the facts) recognize the importance of an emotional hook to get readers engaged. As Lisa said, "There are terribly boring memoirs that fail to move the reader." Emotion is that actuator.

But I'm a story-teller. I harvest stories based on the connections I see, the emotions I feel. I can still cry over a sunset or clap my hands like a child when Blue Heron shows up. I write fiction because stories bubble out of me as if my blood was champagne.

Yet, I tell real stories all the time. I've never thought of memoir as a genre for me because I don't desire to spend much time verifying the facts or validating the memories--I just want to tell the "story."

I think that 99-word constraint makes us write with a sharper intent. When I can write (like this) I tend to ramble. :-) I like the flash (non)fiction story because it creates a scene, reveals only part of the story and builds tension.

I like the memory, too, and it feels fuller, more complete. Less tension, though and more resolution.

I look forward to continuing these discussions as we all explore our writing process and results.

Reply
Lisa Reiter link
14/5/2014 03:09:54 am

I can see what you mean about being able to let it all bubble up out of you with fiction. I am at the grindstone a bit with sorting out sequences of things and research into sciency bits and it doesn't feel very 'free' I have to admit! I don't imagine I'll necessarily write another huge memoir, so the fiction practice in the meantime is a great little escape (thank you Charlie!) And that's why I like the idea of capturing 'memoir' snapshots in little 'bites' so there's a flavour of what I got up to and therefore I hope a sense of what shaped me as a person - but they'll be rather handpicked and therefore I hope, more interesting than a chronological recount of everything.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
14/5/2014 06:50:23 am

I love that your "stories bubble out ... (as if your) blood was champagne". Gorgeous! I'm thinking back to your post about your travel terror, how much is real / how much is story? I'm not so sure now after reading this comment. It doesn't much matter anyway, the telling was great and that is all that is required of a raconteur.

Reply
Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:30:46 am

Glad it stirred you, Charli, and must be interesting reflecting on the differences as you emerge yourself in the efforts of the journalism students.

Reply
Annecdotist
23/5/2014 03:54:18 am

"emerge"?
Presumably meant "immerse" – I'm blaming the dragon that types for me

Norah Colvin link
14/5/2014 07:17:05 am

Hi Anne,
I have finally made my way down through the wonderful comments to leave my comment for you. Your post has certainly sparked a lot of interesting discussion, especially about the value of emotion in both fiction and memoir, and I am pleased to be able to join in. I enjoyed both pieces and it is good to know that no one was harmed during the first adventure. I was amused by the ingenuity of the protagonists in the second story. "Good on them!" I thought. I agree with Charli that you captured the tension in the flash piece, and that the mood of the second was more relaxed, like a long lazy summer holiday. I felt, as I was reading, that each piece may have been written with a different target audience in mind; but that may have been more related to the ages of the characters in each. I feel the memoir would fit beautifully into a short chapter book for readers from about 9 - 13 years. I certainly read many when I was that age. I'm thinking of Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven series though it is so long I ago that I read them that I am intending no comparison with the writing, just with the feeling of the stories. These days there are many more series available for young readers. I guess what I am saying is that you captured the age beautifully. Well done! And I didn't even answer any one of your three questions!

Reply
Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:36:07 am

Thanks for your feedback, Norah, and it's interesting what you say about the childhood reflection. I quite liked that we were so enterprising, but it's such a long time ago I don't really connect with it. In my fiction, as you know I do write about childhood experiences, but I'm interested in how that childhood has shaped the adult. I think it's a very different task when writing for children and it sparked off lots of thoughts about why that isn't for me either!

Reply
Sarah Brentyn link
14/5/2014 07:16:34 pm

I enjoyed both of these but I popped over to your blog from Carrot Ranch to tell you how much I loved your travel flash. It is, for sure, not absolute tosh. ;-)

Reply
Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:20:15 am

Thanks so much for that feedback, Sarah. I see you're sailing through the exercises yourself!

Reply
Annecdotist
15/5/2014 08:40:54 am

Another big thanks to all of you who have commented so far, it's so helpful and I've loved the messy interactions and comments on comments. There's such richness in this feedback and look forward to continuing the conversation on Twitter and the various blogs.

Reply
Irene Waters link
4/6/2014 01:56:57 am

I enjoyed your travel horror best of your two flash pieces. I don't actually see that there is a lot of difference between most novels and memoir, unless they are sci-fi or fantasy novels. If they are written in first person they mimic memoir written by self and if in third person a memoir written by someone else. The big difference I see is that the reader has different expectations of both. The expectation is that a memoir is expected to be true whilst fiction made up. It is expected that the memoirist is the protagonist or knows the protagonist personally. In an interview Elizabeth Gilbert said that if you wanted to know the real her that you needed to read her fiction piece, that her memoirs were highly polished life edited pieces which she believed did not give much of herself away. Relaxed thinking she was writing fiction she allowed herself to be herself. Perhaps that is why your train piece was better. Many authors I believe write memoir but call it fiction for numerous reasons. A memoirist owns the story. Either way they have to hook the reader and keep them there. I have enjoyed reading all the comments and sorry I came in on the discussion late in the piece.

Reply
Annecdotist
4/6/2014 04:55:43 am

Thanks for joining in, Irene, never too late to post a comment here, especially one that makes such a helpful contribution to the discussion.
Thanks for your feedback on the relative merits of my two bits of flash. I've looked back at the travel one and it's as true to my memories of the experience as the earlier childhood one, but I definitely feel more free with something that I'm labelling fiction which must impact on the writing.
Really interesting what you say about Elizabeth Gilbert's experience as it tallies with my sense of fiction as "telling lies to get at the truth" (can't recall who's line I've stolen there), which does make me wonder why writers like yourself and Lisa opt for memoir at all – most of us worry with fiction what people are going to think of us, that anxiety must be magnified with memoir.
You also mentioned readers' expectations as another distinction. As a reader, I also feel more constrained with memoir – much easier with fiction to acknowledge the potential for different interpretations of the text.
Thanks for sharing and making me reflect on this a little deeper.

Reply
Irene Waters link
4/6/2014 02:00:23 pm

I don't worry in the slightest what people are going to think of me. I do worry what my mother might think as she is a very private person who still lives in the Victorian era but not because of how I will feel but how she will feel. What I write is my memory of events. I know it differs at times from my brother's memory of the same events but if it didn't I would be worried that my memory was in fact due to events which I didn't remember at all but had been told about. I do worry about the quality of my writing. My voice is my own and there is nothing I can do about that. If I was writing fiction I would have to change it (possibly) but as far as people interpreting events incorrectly, being judgemental about what I write I really have no problem. The majority of responses I won't know about, people are rarely nasty face to face and if I should be so lucky as to have a newspaper review (even damming) I would feel as though I'd made it. Okay - there may be a smidgin of hurt but I have learnt that people view things from their own experiences and not everyone is going to like work that you do. I guess I write memoir because I am prepared to own the experience. Their are experiences in my life that I will not write about or if I did I would fictionalise them as I am not prepared to own them, or I don't believe that I have the right to write about someone else's life. This conversation has also made me think very seriously about what I do and has left me with a head buzzing with queries which I need to reflect on before putting pen to paper (figuratively speaking.)

Annecdotist
5/6/2014 04:11:16 am

Thanks for popping back, Irene, and I'm glad I've got you thinking! I admire your confident approach to sharing your experiences. It's an interesting point about memory, especially for emotionally laden experiences, in that if they tally with those of others they're probably not our own.
But now I'm wondering about the concept of "owning" your experiences and linking it to memoir, with the aspects that aren't owned going into fiction. I'm thinking of owning as being quite close to accepting; if so, I think that is also useful for fiction that draws on our own experiences, it has to be processed enough so we have the distance to produce our best writing.
I'll be very interested if this has spurred a post on your own blog.

Lisa Reiter link
5/6/2014 05:19:06 am

I don't worry about what people think about me either, Irene - well I do and I don't. Revealing truths about others or not (and leaving key bits of story out as a consequence) is the 'hard' part of memoir for me. My level of openness and honesty though, is - I accept - somewhat unusual. I've learned I only want friends and respect from those who want the real me though - that may be having been through some of the rejections you feel when the going gets tough - but also as an emotional being, I want a truthful exchange of emotions with others not artificial constructs that do not further real understanding of me or another. I want that proper deep human exchange that we're capable of. I think that's only truly achievable if we take down the shields and can accept ourselves warts and all and appreciate others even when they have some ugly looking warts!
I can see that there's stuff I cannot expose in my memoir but will get off my chest later in fiction - all about others inadequacies I'm afraid - I'm sharing mine because for those readers in a life and death situation - they need to KNOW the truth of what I was thinking etc not a glamorised, sanitised version.. If an editor will let me !
FAB discussion - Still a ClinPsych at heart!?

Annecdotist
5/6/2014 08:43:46 am

Thanks, Lisa, for another thought-provoking contribution. Glad you agree on the fabness of this discussion. I'm so happy to host it.
I'm with you on rating authenticity and it can be extremely painful to be applauded for something that doesn't really resonate with who we think we are. And I'm happy with the emotional exchange with friends, and to a degree via the blogs, it seems more one-sided if one is publishing a book: people can suck up your stuff without giving anything back and/or use it as an excuse to dump their life stories on you!!!
After so many years as a clinical psychologist it's impossible for me to tell how much of my curiosity and probing comes from the professional side. I'm sure there's a lot you hang onto when you shrug off the title, but the focus shifts: I'm much more free to pursue my own interests and preferences.

Reply
Irene Waters link
6/6/2014 02:07:01 am

I don't know Ann that owning and accepting are the same thing. By owning I mean that I am prepared to tell the world that this is my experience. There are things in life which I accept but I am not prepared for the world to know about. I think that certainly writing in third person puts distance between experiences that you have not yet come to terms with and writing in a childs voice brings you closer to the emotional experience you had as a child which if you haven't accepted something is much more difficult to write.
I have written a post on my blog but spent all day yesterday writing a conference paper spurred on by this discussion which I agree is fab.
I agree with you Lisa that the truthful emotional exchange despite warts is the ultimate. It is why I am hopeless chatting to people. Without a connection I have absolutely nothing to say.
Thanks Ann for hosting this discussion.

Reply
Annecdotist
6/6/2014 10:35:34 am

Thanks, Irene, that's helpful distinction (and reassuring to know), although I still find the usage a little confusing (thinking of are parallel with objects we own but might not show others).
Popping over to your blog to see what else you've made of this ;)

Nicola Vincent-Abnett link
5/6/2014 09:20:47 am

I responded more strongly to the memoir piece, too.

I once heard a fiction writer say that he was paid to lie.

I was utterly horrified. I have always believed that the point of fiction is to home in on a Truth and explore it. I think, for me, that is very often an emotional truth. In that regard, I'm not sure that memoir and fiction are very different, one from the other.

I had the great good fortune of speaking to Emma Brockes about her memoir "She Left Me the Gun", and about some of the choices she made when writing it. I felt that those choices were, in many ways, quite similar to some of the choices I'd made in writing a novel on a similar subject. There were certainly parallels.

Reply
Irene Waters link
6/6/2014 02:11:37 am

Hi Nicola, I saw your comment when replying to one above and hope you don't mind me butting in. I was confused by the fiction writer being paid to lie - in fiction which is made up nothing is lie because it is fiction. Memoir on the other hand if a memoirist said this there would be huge ramifications. I'd love to know about Emma Brocke's choices. Perhaps you'd like to do a post on that? Cheers Irene

Reply
Annecdotist
6/6/2014 10:42:55 am

I agree, Nicola, it's absolutely about exploring emotional truths, which happens to work better for me in fiction than in memoir. But your point sent me back to my dictionary to check that the verb "to lie" means more than something being untrue, but with intent to deceive. Also as underlined by Irene's point. BTW, it's great when the comments build on other comments. I love having people talk to each other on my blog. Thanks everyone.
I haven't read Emma Brocke's memoir but have read article she's written about it and did catch snippets on the radio. I'd also be interested to hear more about her writing process.

Reply
Nicola Vincent-Abnett link
6/6/2014 02:13:20 pm

Sadly, the conversation with Emma was some time ago and not fresh in my memory. I'd hate to misrepresent her, so I can only generalise about it. It was interesting to me, though how very careful she obviously was about fact-checking and picking through a number of people's very various memories, as I suspect is often the case with well-researched memoirs. Memory is a funny thing. Two people's memories of a single event are seldom similar, let alone the same. I know this from speaking to my own numerous brothers and sisters about our (what I assumed to be) shared childhood. She was also clearly aware of people's feelings and responses to the process that she was going through in writing the memoir and the effect the book might have on them once it was published. My own feeling is that this must be a difficult process for the writer, weighing up the very real need to find and expose the truth with the desire to represent the participants fairly and even with kindness.

Writing fiction is a freer process. Of course there can be repercussions when a writer is telling a story with complex themes, and of course she must answer for her choices, but they are hers alone. A memoir cannot exist without the involvement of others.

I can highly recommend "She Left Me the Gun". I thought it very good.

Annecdotist
10/6/2014 02:45:15 am

Thanks for elaborating, Nicola, that's really helpful.
A few people have commented that one of their difficulties with memoir is being faithful to their own experience while fair to other people whose memories differ. This memoir might be worth studying for how she's managed it.
This difficulty can't even arise in fiction as Lionel Shriver found when writing about a family similar to her own:
http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdotal/whose-story-is-it-anyway


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