My last book was written three years ago, and since then I’ve been unsure whether I had either the motivation or the time to write another. In 2022 I wrote a play because I was asked to do so. The writing, followed by taking the play to the stage, took up the whole of that year. 2023 seemed to be a year of travelling, with one holiday and two trips prompted by the need to see old friends. As I get older I’m aware that I may not be able to see friends overseas as often as I once did, and each time may be the last. I didn’t have enough settled time to start a writing project.
As 2024 began, however, the urge to write emerged from its hiding place and began to bother me, I’ve written in one form or another all my life and I enjoy it. Writing produces a level of concentration that blots out everything else, and feels like really good exercise. If I didn’t have a story waiting to be told, what could I write about? It occurred to me that my grandchildren knew me only as their grandmother, which I have been for the past twenty years or so. My life before they came along is largely unknown to them, and I wanted them to know more about it. Why is that, I wonder? Ego, possibly. Or maybe my wish to inform them is just a front: what I really want is to inform myself, to put my own life into some perspective and see what it looks like on the page.
I’ve seen books and courses on memoir writing but I haven’t checked them to see how such an undertaking should be approached. I decided that so long as I was clear about ‘purpose and audience’, as with any good writing, and kept to that, the form would take care of itself. So I accepted my first decision, that my purpose was to inform my grandchildren and that they were my audience. That has proved useful, for the time being at least. For example, having them as my prospective audience has steered me away from too lengthy and detailed a description of how my partner and I began our relationship, which is probably a blessing.
I’ve called the piece ‘Fragments from a Life’ because it is fragmentary. Some things I remember from decades ago as clearly as the day they happened, while other episodes are only a blur, or have been forgotten all together. As I write, details come back to me, and some of them have been so painful that I’ve had to stop for a while, and they have resurfaced in my dreams. I realise that what cements an incident in my memory is not the factual context but what I was feeling at the time. Emotions create the sharpest memories. One example is a road trip across the USA undertaken in the summer of 1977 with my then husband, my sister, and my young daughter. It included some of the most iconic places and landscapes imaginable, but what I remember most is the misery and exhaustion that enveloped me and blotted out almost everything else. It was probably that misery that has prevented me in the years since from making any effort to remember. I’m sure my daughter, who was nine at the time, will recall far more than I do.
I’ve chosen chronology as the simplest structure, whereas it could conceivably have been arranged in themes – travels, work, family, and so on. Those possible themes have been much entangled, however, which probably says something about my life. Work has been the dominating thread, but being a self-employed person for the majority of my working life means that my working decisions have been personal ones too. I see now that I have regularly put my work needs above family needs, and I have some regrets about that.
So far, the ‘fragments’ amount to nearly 20,000 words, and there’s still a fair bit to cover. I have an agent now, fifteen years after I began writing, and she rubs her hands at the prospect of getting my memoir published, but she will be disappointed as I have no intention of sharing it beyond the family. By the way, the story of how an agent appeared so late on the scene is an interesting one, for another occasion.
For now, I shall plough on and keep editing, editing, editing. I’m enjoying it. Maybe by the end of it I’ll feel more inspired to write another novel, or another play. Who knows?
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