Category: writing

this time with less laziness

That was nothing more than extraordinary laziness that last post. Goodness me, what would my self help books think of me?

Fifi and Pen raise the questions to which I should have posted the answers, so let’s see the question again. When considering whether or not to include someone, or something someone has done, in my blog or memoir, a question I sometimes ask is:

Does the person have right of reply?

Rather than providing me with a yes/no answer, the question acts more as a prompt, giving my thinking some direction. Probably, I could draw you a flowchart of sorts, but I’m too lazy for that.

As an aside, much of this thinking is instinctive, subconscious or unconscious, but when I do need to take the time to sit and think it through (for example, every now and then I think, ‘Oh, I wonder why I have never mentioned such and such’), I find that I have made this a consistent starting point.

So, back to the question. Does the person have a right of reply?

Because the people I write about do not have their own blogs or write for publication, or speak publicly, I often consider that it is enough if that person has the right of private reply.

Consider the mister. He would never start his own blog or publish a piece of memoir or have the funds to plaster his comments on a billboard, but he has every opportunity to say (but rarely does), ‘Erm, do you not think the way you related that story was a little, you know, one-sided’. I guess the mister’s ultimate right of reply lies in my commitment to our relationship and the kind of relationship that we have.

My parents have a different kind of right of reply. For obvious reasons, they couldn’t actually write or say anything, but they’re my parents – I might be forty years old and they might be dead, but nonetheless, I am constantly seeking their advice and their opinions and chatter with them constantly. Of course, there is a danger in imagining the way in which someone exercises their right of reply, but I am confident that I come to those relationships with enough honesty that if I do make a mistake in how they actually would respond, it is an error of judgment and not one of defensiveness or lack of generosity or revenge. Also, my father gave me explicit permission to say whatever I wanted to say.

Anyway, when it comes to my parents I use a different kind of question, based around whether or not I have the right to tell the story, and the parent-child relationship is, I think, a unique one in our ‘rights’ to a story. Perhaps I will talk about this another day.

Some people do have a right of reply, but I still choose not to write about them. For example, an alarm bell rings if I imagine that person exercising that right, and even as I am imagining it, my heart races and my breath shallows. This is a sign to me that I can not write about that person with sufficient objectivity, which is, in turn a sign of other things, for example, that I am unable or unwilling to write with honesty or generosity. In such a case, we all lose. I am limited in expanding on this point by providing examples, because it would immediately mean that I have to write about people and events I have already decided I don’t want to write about. Sorry bout that.

What if the answer is no, no the person does not have a right of reply? Sometimes, I might decide that doesn’t matter and write about them anyway, perhaps because they are completely unidentifiable or sufficiently anonymous. But generally, if they do not have a right of reply, I proceed with caution, because it is so often a sign of a power imbalance (this is where a discussion about the rights to a story would be useful, and I really will come back to that another day).

In this case, I might consider the consequences. For example, in telling this story, is there more gained than lost? As a human rights activist, I have very often made the decision that yes there is more to gain by discussing this situation publicly, but as a blogger or potential memoirist wallowing in middle class privilege, I have to know that ‘giving voice’ is fraught with opportunities to patronise or appropriate. Am I doing either of those things?

In my previous life, this was less of a problem, but at the moment, I am definitely having to weave my way through this. Luckily for you, this is one piece of angst and over-thinking you will be spared.

I do have other things to say, and I know that this is all a bit superficial, but this cough I’ve been fighting for the last few months seems to be developing into one of those pre-sinusitis infections which means my ears are ringing and I’m quite light-headed (not in a good way), so I’m going to lie down and possibly go back to sleep for the afternoon.

So begins the first day etcetera

Right then, I’ve finally wrangled a draft of the memoir into shape enough that I can call it a draft and today I will ship it off to someone for their feedback. Which means that it is time to take step two in the return to my freelancing career.* I have determined that I am strong enough to return to the cycle of rejection, rejection, rejection, sniff of success, rejection, rejection, acceptance, oh sorry journal has just folded after all, rejection, acceptance.** This means, today I shall be finding a journal or magazine currently taking submissions and then, over the coming days (or weeks – see asterisked explanation of career) writing an entire complete piece and submitting it for consideration.

*career applied here in the loosest of possible applications
** yes, yes, happiness and success gurus, I know I’m supposed to be envisioning success, but please to be allowing me some reality…for as Dr Phil says, ‘The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour’

On not

I’ve been reading a lot about creativity lately, particularly about writing, but about creating more generally. And particularly about doing it. About sticking your bum to the seat, about putting in the time, about letting the housework go. And so on. I’ve got myself good goals and am filled with optimism and the joy of getting it done. I’m more or less sticking to my programme of little bits lots of times, stitch by stitch, step by step, brick by brick and so on.

Now, I’m not sure why, but all this reading has led me to wonder about all the people who don’t become writers. All the brazillions* of people who go to weekend workshops, join groups, find mentors, go on retreats, invest in scrivener, but don’t, in the end, write ‘writer’ on their departure card.

I know some of them become lawyers or travel agents or gardeners or nurses instead. Some of them are lazy or unfocussed or find they’re better at something else. Some of them are handed lives which making writing impossible. And a not-small number must be a bit like me, setting plans and meaning to get onto it, just as soon as I am settled in to Abu Dhabi, once I’m back from Edinburgh, after Christmas, once I finish work and so on and etcetera.

But some of them, one or two at least, must, at some point, have looked around and thought, ‘This isn’t working, is it?’. There must be some who looked at their words on the paper and thought, ‘I know I could do this, but the world won’t miss me if I don’t, I’m going to finish knitting that silk, lace scarf instead.’

There must be someone out there for whom not writing was an active decision. And their’s would be an interesting book.

*still my favourite George W joke

A matter unexpected

One of the consequences of returning to work is that I never have the house to myself. It is no longer mine to roam around unhindered, moving from my desk to the sink, trailing and trialing my thoughts uninterrupted.

I have taken to getting up early. Earlier and earlier every day, greedy for every moment that I can spend alone. Knowing how deeply I love to sleep will give you some idea of just how much I value silence and solitude.

I sit at my desk, pen in hand, computer screen dimmed. I barely dare to write so fragile is the silence, so scared am I to lose it, so badly do I want the time to stop.

Even though I’m already awake, the sound of the first alarm still ruins my day.

Getting things done

The mister and the lads got back from their Al Ain daytrip rather late last night, and because I still hadn’t finished my book, when the mister asked about my day, I said, somewhat despondently, ‘I must be the most unproductive person in the world,’ to which the mister replied, ‘but how do you know that everyone else is productive?’

It’s the kind of thing the mister says, and it sometimes cheers me up and sometimes gives me the screaming shits.

Anyway, the ensuing conversation reminded me of a lesson I have already learned, but seem to have forgotten. The lesson is: it’s no good having a to do list which reads ‘write book’. A list like that just leaves you feeling despondent and unproductive day after day after day.

So then, I spent an hour with a purple texta, making a list of the things I need to write in order to finish this draft. And today, I will work through one or two of those things and when the mister and the lads get back from the supermarket and their game of squash I will say, ‘I got a lot done today’.

Another way of looking at it

He says: ‘Mum, ever since you’ve got that computer you’ve just been living on it.’

I reply: ‘I’m trying to get my book written, I need to work really hard on it, otherwise I will never finish it.’

He asks: ‘What’s this one about?’

I tell him: ‘It’s a memoir…’

He interrupts: ‘Oh, so it’s like your memories?’

I say: ‘Sort of.’

He is perceptive: ‘So it’s about Denis, right?’

I say: ‘Yes, and some other people.’

Eagerly: ‘Me? Am I in it?’

Thinking quickly about how I’m going to answer it: ‘Well, I don’t want to write too much about you and your brother…’

Interrupting (again): ‘Because we’re not memories, right?’

It’s still hot

I’ve been writing a set of essays which I hope will one day be published either singularly or as the set that I am constructing them as.

Actually, I think they are more memoir than they are essays, but memoir sort of declares to the world that you are a fascinating person to whom fascinating things have happened, whereas I am a person who made a couple of extraordinarily stupid decisions, attempted to make up for them by making even more and increasingly stupid decisions, then thought that writing non-fiction would be a good (by which I mean, among other things, legitimate) way to further avoid the frightningness that is the second draft of my next piece of fiction and, lacking both the expertise and the gumption to investigate any other subject beyond myself in any depth, thought I may as well write about those stupid decisions.

I did wonder whether I would have anything to say that I haven’t already blogged about. I mean, goodness me, I’ve been rather revealing over these last couple of months. Perhaps, I thought to myself, blogging is a substitute for memoir. But the more I wrote offline, the more I realised that this was an issue barely worth a second thought. For one thing, there’s heaps I haven’t blogged about (for example, you don’t know what my grandmother said to the mister the day we told her we were getting married). But really, it’s not an issue, because as with all these questions, the answer is not an either/or. Blogging and memoir share some similarities, but they are different. Different processes, different results.

While the blog helps me to record things immediately and does provide an opportunity to think and reflect on the things that happen to me, it is altogether a different kind of thought and reflection than I have been doing while writing the essays.

Most of the differences come back to the same thing of course. The immediacy of blogging versus the ‘looking back’ of memoir. Because memoir demands a cohesive narrative beyond the simple chronological narrative of my blog, I feel that it is forcing me to explore situations and emotions more fully, to contextualise everything (for myself if not for the reader, at the moment, everything is done for myself because the reader is still a concept, a potential, rather than an actual).

My blog is a photo album, filled with snapshots where the essays, although potentially stand-alone, are a film.

And actually, that little analogy is bloody brilliant and has just helped me to fill in the gaps of one of the chapters essays I’ve been trying to write, so if you’ll excuse me I’m turning the interwebs off again and re-opening my increasingly large, but ever-more wieldy document.

PS One thing I’m surprised about is the amount of effort I have put into thinking about ego and narcissim and so forth. You’d think blogging would’ve moved me way past those worries. But no.
‘Do you think it’s too self-centred?’ I asked the mister of a piece I gave him to read the other night (this is unusual, I rarely let him read anything).
‘Well, didn’t you say it’s memoir?’ he asked in his engineering way.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Sometimes I really don’t understand you.’