Life Writing

As some of you may know from earlier posts on this blog, as well as writing fiction I have an interest in life-writing, ie: writing about real things which have happened to you.

This came about in two ways, the first through writing fiction and the second through teaching life-writing to students.

In terms of writing fiction, I have spent most of life doing that thing we are told to do - 'write what you know'. Now, only a very simple reading of that concept means that you can only write about real things that may have happened to you. Instead, it is a deeper thought, which says that whatever you are writing, include those concepts and emotions which you have come across and, sometimes, where appropriate, include fictionalised elements of reality.

I think it would be impossible to write something completely fictional. Writers are forever borrowing from real life, even if it is just from observations - the way someone walks, talks, flicks their hair, wears mismatched socks on every alternate Wednesday or whatever. And sometimes we borrow events or snippets of conversations. It is what we do and how we create, and in each usage there will be a greater or lesser correspondence to real life.

I started thinking about this a few years ago when I wrote a story which was very close to autobiography. It had a fictional narrator, and the main event (the loss of the narrator's father when the narrator was very young) was also fictional, but many of the details I used in the story were real and true to my life. Over and above that, the theme of loss which ran through the story very much reflected my own feelings about my father who was, at that time, suffering from dementia. After I had written it, I took great interest in trying to work out if this was memoir or fiction. It ticked a lot of the boxes for both. It was a made up piece of work, but it borrowed a lot of both my memories and my feelings.

With distance, I class that piece as fiction, but it certainly gave me an insight into the crossover between the two forms, and left me interested in how much reality writers use in their work.

A couple of years later, while working at Edge Hill University, I was asked to take on the Life Writing module. This sparked my second wave of interest. I was teaching the students how to write a whole range of pieces, from personal essays to travel articles, biography, memoir, etc A topic which soon came up was the concept of 'truth' versus 'accuracy', something which is still a debatable topic.

The other main issue was to do with writing style. How do you make the mundane interesting or stop the tragic from becoming melodramatic.

This last is something which I think is crucial to life-writing, in that most people who set out to document their lives don't just want to talk about making a sandwich, but often about difficult experiences in their lives. The technique I recommend for this is to write completely without emotion and just present the events to the reader. It is the ultimate in 'showing' not 'telling' in that you present the tragic events to the reader just as they were presented to you and allow them to feel the same things you felt without the authorial voice imposing upon them. It is a very powerful technique and one that I employed in a piece I wrote about collecting my brothers ashes from the crematorium a couple of days after his funeral (I have posted the piece below, in case you're interested.)

What has been most interesting, however, since immersing myself in life-writing, is just how useful the specific techniques have become in my fiction writing. By aligning oneself with the events in a novel and searching for ways to tell them which convey the situation without directing the reader, I think that the writing becomes better and the reader, by having to do a little more work and engage a little more empathy, becomes more involved in the story.

I'm glad that I was given the life-writing module to teach as I think it improved my fiction writing and gave me insight into the tools that I need to use in given situations.

And... here comes the plug. I'm running an online course in life-writing. If you fancy giving it a go and seeing how it interacts with your fiction writing (or poetry, or script, or whatever) or just want to do it to set down those stories you have always promised to write, then please do sign up. It starts on 17th September 2012 and further details are here:  http://www.calumkerr.co.uk/pp002.shtml

Advert over. Here's the piece I wrote. Thanks for reading and, until next time, take care.
Calum

The Box

It’s been three days since the funeral. It’s strange to be back here.

                It was raining on the day. Pathetic fallacy, that’s called. The sky wept along with us. We moved from the car to the shelter of the crematorium’s porch, and people milled and talked, sometimes about the deceased, but more often about other things.

                We only had a few moments, though, before we were called to carry the coffin.

                It’s not something you think about very much until you actually have to do it, but you need training to carry a coffin. There were four of us, one at each corner. We were told how to lift it in a particular way, and settle it on our shoulders, then walk in step to keep it level, stop it from slipping.

                I was conscious, as we walked down the central aisle of the chapel – all the other mourners having already taken their seats – that we looked suitably slow and respectful. I wanted to turn and tell them that it wasn’t respect, it was the weight. We couldn’t walk any faster. The weight of years, the weight of life, pressed down on each of us as we carried him to the front.

                As we placed the coffin on the platform at the front, there was a sense of relief as the weight was taken from us. I wondered if he felt the same relief when he was finally able to shed his burdens.

                The rest passed in a blur of music, tears, and the kind words of others.

Now, three days later I have returned to carry out the next duty.

                There are no black cars or black-clad mourners today. The chapel is deserted, and the sun is shining. Is that another reflection of mood? Is this a good day to balance the bad?

                It’s strange to be alone. I seem to have been surrounded by people for so many days.

                I don’t linger in the porch, nor enter the chapel, but instead make my way around to the back door. I’m conscious of the large chimney which rises from this part of the building, a dark finger pointing up into the clear blue of the sky.

                I knock on the partially-open, wooden door, but there is no answer so I step into the gloom.

                It’s dark after the brightness of outside. Once my eyes adjust I see more wood and the normal trappings of an office. I have stepped back-stage and can see the workings of this particular theatre. It feels like trespassing. This place feels more sacred than the other room with its pews and symbols.

                “Hello?” says a voice behind me.

                I turn, startled and see the a face that I only vaguely recognise, even though it’s been little more than 72 hours since I last saw it.

                “Sorry I wasn’t here. How can I help you?”

                “I’ve come to pick up my brother.”

                “Of course.” He bows his head in a show of respect which seems utterly unconscious, simply part of the man.

                He takes his name from me, nods again, then disappears through another wooden door. He returns with a small box, no more than ten inches long. He doesn’t hand it to me immediately, but places it on the table and directs me to complete and sign some forms.

                With the formalities complete, he lifts the small container and places it into my hands.

                I’m strangely split, aware of what is happening, but also aware of a haze which seems to have settled on me.

                I wander back into the sunshine, blinking at the brightness.

I walk slowly, not out of respect, but because I cannot walk any faster. The weight of this box is so much less but also so much greater than that of the coffin. I can feel it trying to pull me down to the ground as I walk back to the car park, alone, just me and my brother.

(Originally published at http://flash365.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/21-box.html)

Stardom at last!

I haven't blogged for a little while - I've actually been getting on with some writing and rewriting - but was going to sit down yesterday and talk about the recent spate of submissions I have been sending. That post is still to come, but the day kinda got away from me. At midday I got a phone-call asking me if I would do a radio interview later in the afternoon.

The call came from my head of department at Edge Hill. They had been approached by Radio Lancashire who, prompted by the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs, wanted to talk to someone about Life Writing. Well, as that's the creative writing subject I teach for EH, they came to me. The idea was to give the listeners some ideas on the role of life writing - biographies and memoirs in particular - and also what they should think about if they were going to write their own.

I have never given a radio interview before and so was pretty nervous. It didn't help that it was going to be live rather than a pre-recorded interview, but I figured it was exactly the stuff that I know about, so I was happy to do it. The process was interesting.

First I spoke to the presenter of the programme, to introduce myself and he then proceeded to ask me what would be good questions for him to ask. We agreed them between us and I gave him some quick sketchy answers and that was that, I just had to wait for the radio station to ring me at about 5.15 to give the interview.

Butterflies took up residence in my stomach as the time approached, but the time was usefully spent refining what I was going to say. The flutters multiplied when the phone went and they asked me to wait another 20 mins. Finally, they called and I was patched through to the studio. I listened to about 5 minutes of the programme and then, with a rather over-the-top introduction, I was live.

It went pretty well. There were a few ums and ahs, and I changed tack at one point. I also managed to be really snobby at the end, but in the main I feel I got the information across in a concise and interesting way, answered all the questions as asked, and didn't sound too much of a prat. The interview finished, he thanked me, the line went dead, and that was that.

Thanks to the wonders of the web I was soon able to 'Listen Again' to the interview. I scrolled the slider through the programme to about the point where I thought I would be. A voice was talking and I presumed it was the item after me, but then I recognised some of the words and realised I was listening to myself. I didn't recognise my voice at all! Still, I listened back and was quite pleased with it. I sounded rather posh - a combination teaching/phone voice - and there was a trace of my father's tone in there, especially when he used to give interviews on radio or TV, but I sounded confident and like someone who knows what they're talking about. So that's not so bad, eh?

And that was that: my brush with fame. It was only 3 minutes, so if Andy Warhol's right then I still have another 12 minutes to have some other time. If it's like yesterday, I think I might just be looking forward to it.

The interview is available to listen to at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009lpqp until 7th Sept. I'm on at about the 1 hour 37 mark. Let me know what you think, either of my performance or what I had to say. All feedback welcome.

Art meet life. Life, this is art.

Today I have started work on my conference paper for this year's Great Writing conference at Bangor. I plan to look at the way in which fiction writing and life-writing cross over and interact.

The paper was inspired by my first experience of teaching Life Writing, which was this year at Edge Hill University. I had previously taught elements of it in Adult Ed writing courses, and done some 'Reminiscence' writing with older people for Stockport Education Authority, but had never taught it at HE level before. It was a steep learning curve, but one I enjoyed immensely.

I discovered that there were a host of problems with teaching life-writing, as it is not something that students normally do once they are past the age of 11 and no longer writing 'What I did on my holidays'-style essays. One is getting them away from exactly that juvenile style of "We went here, then we did this, then we did that, etc." auto-biographic writing. Another is to get them to write about a more interesting topic than just a holiday or a party but to deal with something more emotional, more personal, and more involved. Lastly there is the whole problem of how much they are allowed to bend the truth to fit the art.

Over the course of the year I devised a range of exercises which allowed the students to stretch themselves in all these areas, and many of them rose to the challenge and will feature in my paper. Some of the exercises were invented during my drive to the University to teach the class, and then were later quoted back to me by the students as being incredibly useful.

In my other job, I was also still teaching fiction writing. However, my experience teaching life-writing made me realise that I could use the same exercises to fix a whole different range of problems in fiction writing: lack of realism, lack of emotional involvement, poor dialogue. So I did.

All of which has made for a fascinating year in my teaching career, but also a great topic for a paper. Now, all I have to do is finish writing it.

And all you have to do is decide whether any of the above tale actually happened, or did I make it all up?