When you are in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all.

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

Bringing my exegesis together this weekend — I’m grouping my research into an intro and nine small chapters, to present woven between my memoir pieces. The quote above, from Margaret Atwood, applies both to my project and where I am now. Right now this process is a confusion, but in a few months’ time I will be able to recount the last weeks of university clearly. They will form, in some way, a story. In the same way, my characters (Fifteen, Seventeen and Ten so far) are written into story that only arrived at this form later. At the time, each experience was ‘a dark roaring, a blindness…a house in a whirlwind’. This quote begins the trailer below — Ed invited me to see this film at MIFF, but I was out of town. Will definitely chase it up.

What I’m discovering through writing my exegesis:

1. There is so much about this topic, both on the fringes and smack-bang in the centre, that I don’t know.

2. I cannot write at home. Hanging out washing immediately becomes a higher priority.

3. Tea helps, even if I forget to drink it.

4. I am too critical of myself, too often.

Lists and flippancy.

Dividing my workload into lists has been really helping my research this last fortnight, because even though there are mountains of words ahead, I can see what I have ticked off — what I have achieved, however miniscule. I am still leaving the big tasks until last, which will become a problem soon, but it’s helpful when I have only a little time (twenty minutes on the train home from work, five minutes waiting for a tram) to be able to read an article, or write a blog post, or check out the background story of a work I’ve never heard of before. NOW TO TACKLE THE BIG ONES. WRITE THOUSANDS. READ THOUSANDS. TAME THE CAPS-LOCK KEY. DRINK EARL GREY.

Writing and editing and ordering and lifting weights.

I presented two creative pieces and one exegetical (draft) chapter to my lab class today, with positive feedback to the creative work and helpful, constructive feedback to the exegetical work. I have been worried about the tone and content of the memoir pieces, so hearing that I’m pleasing readers is really building my confidence. While I feared self-indulgence and monotony, others found the stories ‘personal and captivating’. 

Feedback for the exegetical chapter was mainly the suggestion that I give more examples and clarification — which is something I’d worried I’d overdone, so I was surprised to hear this. Be prepared then — examples galore are on the way!

I’ve been reading the acknowledgments and commentary around Jo Case’s recent memoir, Boomer & Me. It is a memoir about her son who has Asberger’s. The story is told lovingly and openly and honestly, and invites the reader to relate to the experiences depicted. The response from critics and readers is very positive. But what I haven’t found to be questioned, is the fact that this woman has published a memoir about her young son. Regardless of good intent, is this an ethical issue? What has Case done to evade this ethical question? What boxes has she ticked? How has she overcome the ethical problem of writing about someone else — someone who is a minor, and who is under her care? 

I’m feeling creative this week, and less stressed. Yesterday Francesca and I worked out a structure through which to present my project and exegesis, and also the form. We talked about the constant references throughout the project to childhood crafts, the aesthetics of Japanese culture, and also the physicality of writing — I’m thinking about referencing these in the presentation of my work, through making the ‘volume’ (or three) by hand. I also published this memoir piece. 

Less stress also achieved by preparing all my food in advance this week and lifting weights at the gym! Distracted from impending deadlines by eating lamb shank soup and watching muscles grow.

‘Potentially diverse rememberings of shared encounters.’

It’s the start of week 5, and I’m sitting here with chai tea and half an exegesis draft. Feeling the pressure. I’ve been trying to time my research with the working day — no late-night writing or editing, and no late nights in general. At night I’ve been reading anthology Just Between Us, which claims to ‘tell the truth’ about female friendships. I’d be lying if I told you I bought this simply for research purposes, but I have found it helpful to see how other female authors write about people close to them. Some of the stories are labelled nonfiction, in which friends are labelled by the first letters of their names, or else their names are changed. In the ‘fiction’ pieces there is so much detail and grit and feeling that I wonder how many of these are actually nonfiction too. I particularly love Melina Marchetta’s story (‘fiction’) where events are told through multiple perspectives — through an angry email chain between old friends. Fiction, yet exactly how such a story might be shared in real, web-connected life.

Elsewhere, Marieke Hardy also publishes email correspondence in her memoir, You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead. She writes a story about her memories of an ex-boyfriend who liked prostitutes and coerced her into having threesomes. She calls him ‘brutally and emotionally damaged’; a ‘dirty, over-experienced, stripper-fucking pro’. The story is detailed, both in the moment and in reflection. The last few pages are the email exchange she had with Matty about the story:

‘Potentially diverse rememberings of shared encounters’, Marieke calls her writing.

‘I just may not be the person you remember,’ he responds. ‘That’s a real shame to me. That you don’t know me at all.’

This makes me think about the pieces I’m publishing online. Will people think I don’t know them, because I have written them differently to how they see themselves?

Research as unlearning.

Today I think I’ve spent most of my research time unlearning things I thought I already knew.

Me, but not me.

For Semester Two I’ve begun using this blog as more of a research diary; a place to talk about how I’m feeling about research as well as the research itself. I’m feeling positive this week — I wrote 1200 words a day in the last two days, 1000 of which are somewhat useful. I’ve been writing about the process of writing and publishing ‘A Girl called Fifteen.’, and decisions I made while editing the material. The questions I am exploring include:

‘ Publishing writing about living people has implications; I acknowledge the subjectivity of my writing, but will they?’ 

‘Regardless of their truthfulness, what makes these events and these private histories my stories to tell?’ 

‘As a child I was obsessive about dates of when things happened, but over the years this need has diminished and I remember that time simultaneously as a series of flashbacks and as a dreamy flow of walks to school, leftovers and flights to my bedroom. How could this sporadic, non-linear childhood be written into story?’

I’ve been reading Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being and Marina Warner’s introduction to Moments of Truth (edited by Lorna Sage). The two ideas that really resonate with me are:

1. Woolf’s theories about ‘non-being’ — the ‘silent and invisible’ parts of one’s own experience, which one forgets because they are parts of a routine we have learned. 

2. ‘new beings made of words’ (Marina Warner) I like this phrase: new beings made of words. Each writer in the collection Moments of Truth doesn’t simply tell their story, but finds her story in the writing. Her self on the page grows in words rather than in blood and muscle and bone. In the same way, my character Fifteen became a ‘new being made of words’. This is me, but this is not me. 

Writing as a disinheritance.

I just published the first piece of my memoir project here, with mixed feelings. This piece is short, mostly non-eventful and probably too image/metaphor-heavy. That’s okay, I’m telling myself. It’s the first piece, and it’s a second draft. I chose this piece to publish first because I wanted to begin with something gentle. Brian Castro calls writing from life a ‘disinheritance’, and this both concerns and interests me. Over the weekend I perused my drafts and made a list of all the real people who may be affected by what I have written. Who might be embarrassed, who might disagree, who might remember things differently. This is the only piece that doesn’t intersect with that list, and so I’ve eased the reader in. Maybe. From here we take a deep breath and plunge. 

Explaining slanted story to the believers.

How to explain the concept of memoir to someone who never questions the meaning  of ‘truth’?

It has been a challenge this week, with memoir pieces being published online, to convince readers (in particular, family and social media acquaintances) that I’m not telling a historical story. I think this is because the concept of nonfiction is something that many outside the field take as fact — for my brother, nonfiction is animal books. For many people in the small town where I grew up, it is celebrity confessional autobiographies. So where does my writing fit?

Having to put these ideas about slanted story into words is forcing me to question my own research — which is of course useful — but it also makes me wonder about my own preconceptions of what I’m doing. And wonder if somehow the point will be missed by readers.

Editing memoirs.

I’ve spent most of my time in the lab today editing memoir pieces for Lip Magazine. Several writers have sent me their pitches and drafts and it’s my job to offer structural suggestions and comments on their language used. By the end of the process of editing, the pieces are of publishable quality — whatever that means. 

Working on these memoir pieces today — written by other people, about their childhoods, experiences and trauma — has led me to think about the extent to which we can edit someone’s work. There might be a piece (and this is an example I’ve made up) about grieving the death of a parent, where the details are listed vaguely and in a similar way to other stories of family deaths. But how can I ask a writer to tell their story a different way? This is how they recall it — who am I to try to change their story? What could be the effects of me suggesting something as simple as ‘Can you expand this paragraph?’ when the subject content is so close to home? Perhaps the day really was a ‘blur’. Maybe it really did ‘feel like a dream’. Who am I to tell someone to cut what some readers might call ‘cliches’? 

I’m currently editing my own work for publication too. My memoir needs structural changes and many sentences make me cringe. That said, I’m hesitant to hand out the manuscript to others to read, as the content is still so raw. I’m not ready to be told that how I felt in certain scenes was a cliched way to feel, or that what I did wasn’t a believable response. Regardless of the truth-aspect, I think writing memoir uses a different part of the brain to writing fiction. 

Sharpening the question of ethics.

I see myself as a fish in a stream; deflected; held in place; but cannot describe the stream. — Virginia Wolff

Back on track: today has been a day of productivity — I’ve rewritten my research question, received feedback for my memoir-ette (yep, it’s a thing) and begun planning my final piece and exegesis.

Last night I dreamt my supervisor, Francesca, led me into a huge crowd and announced to everyone that the 7000 words I’d sent her were rubbish, and that I needed to start over. She’d crossed out every word with red so no one else could read them. Needless to say, that was close to the worst outcome so after waking up this morning I was ready to face anything today. I had been unsure of my writing — writing about my experiences and writing about the writing of these had led me to question my own integrity and my decisions to explore this dangerous territory. Why did I want to subject myself to this? Why did I want to consider things I remember from a long time ago? Why hadn’t I moved on yet? What did this whole project say about me?

Fortunately I was met with a more positive response — Francesca reported that most of the work was really strong and that she could see the questions I was thinking through and exploring. I’ve now decided that I will publish pieces of my memoir online, as the question of ethics — and especially the ethics of publishing material about others — is something that continues to arise in my research. For example, ethical considerations lead me to filter what I’ve written in these blog posts.

I will be publishing pieces of this memoir in an online space over the coming weeks, and so they will be available for anyone to read. This publication process will form part of my research about the ethics of nonfiction writing.

The point I want to stress to those new to the memoir genre is that these pieces are told from my experience and recollections of events, and will always be slanted. They will be partial truths. I will change names where I feel this is needed, but I want to tell you that this is a story made of memories, not of facts. I have constructed these pieces, and I want to lead you through this process of construction. I want you to look closely for the fuzzy edges, notice the absences, question the veracity of my stories. I am exploring the limitations of telling these stories, the complexities of telling stories that don’t belong just to me.