MSLEXIA MEMOIR COMPETITION 2014

So excited to have been longlisted for Mslexia memoir competition 2014.

Tracey Holland’s Narrative is a Family Affair.

Tracey Holland's Narrative is a Family Affair..

Inspiration

Inspiration.

via Inspiration.

Tracey Holland’s Narrative is a Family Affair.

Strange Alliances

Tracey Holland is one of my fellow classmates who, like me, has been doing her BA in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Nottingham as a part-time degree and as a mature student. So we have known each other for quite a few years. When Tracey decided to do a memoir for her final project, I asked her if she would share some of her experiences of her project.

Why do a degree in creative and professional writing now, and not when you left school?

Because I wasn’t ready, it’s as simple as that. I think sometimes you have to live a little, and I’d always wanted to write. Even as a child I never had my nose out of a book. My father’s form of punishment for me was to send me outside minus the book. So I’d get outside and there’d be lovely weather, but without…

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Millie And Her Moo

I have just written a new children’s book.

Its titled “Milie And Her Moo”

I have enjoyed it so much, I have an idea for more.

Honesty

When you’re truly honest and revealing about yourself, it creates a sigh in other people, They realize they’re not alone, they’re not a freak: Someone else has felt the exact same way or lived their dream. If you’re going to skimp on the truth, then you’re doing a disservice. Honesty is not only a gift to other people—it’s a gift to yourself.

In many ways, writing a memoir is like painting. You slap some words on a blank canvas, take a few steps back, look at how they’re coming together, then refine things further. That step back is retrospection. It’s thoughtfulness. It’s an attempt to figure things out. It’s the search for your truth.

I decided quite early on to put “That Day” first. I didn’t want to begin at the beginning,
or tell my story chronologically. That’s too predictable. Think of your favorite books. Most don’t start at the beginning. Instead they rivet you with instant action and intrigue. A good beginning is a tease. It gives readers just enough action to hook them without divulging the outcome. Then it flashes back to the real chronological beginning and fills in the background.

Another technique I used, which again I gained from university. In Davids Kershaws class on etymology if the English language. This was used by journalists is the “snapshot”. This is one way a writer can develop an idea in a piece of writing. It is showing the reader a photograph of the scene. It involves the writer taking time time to show the picture through sensory details, concrete words and poetic language.

Most of the memories I have written so far have a great deal of emotional moments in them, both good and bad.  I have also tried to visualise the scenes in my head, this has helped me to remember the places these memories have taken play and this gives the whole piece a sense of time and place.

 I can’t say I have always been drawn memoir writing. In the last years I feel there is a trend towards so called celebrity autobiographies, and misery memoirs and biographies. It has somehow saturated the bookshelves with a certain amount of drivel. Bands and celebrities that have only been famous for about two years and churning out novels that have no literary merit in them.

This may seem harsh and I know everyone is entitled to write what they feel,

(Though I have to say, I doubt most could put pen to paper.)

So I have to ask myself, could my book being different, be good or bad? I have decided to take the positive approach and say to all agents and publishers out there, “hey my book isn’t a misery novel and even though some of my life was difficult, I haven’t been permanently or physically scarred. Now is the time for something different and that’s what I feel my book is

”

I also found that nighttime became a productive

I also found that nighttime became a productive time also. I would place my journal and pen at the side of my bed and waited for lightning to strike twice. It’s astonishing how many ideas can come to a writer just before you sleep and early in the mornings. I soon filled many pages with literary gems, that I have since used in many of my stories and poems. The journal is a valuable tool, I have grown to appreciate more and more as I have progressed as a writer, especially as my writing muse can hit at any time. Even if I find I have a block with a certain piece, I can walk away from the computer and maybe go for a walk, then if the answers hits I can quickly retrieve trusty journal and place the gem inside for later.

When you are trying to write your memoirs, some things can trigger another memory. The timeline can become less blurry. Scents and sounds have triggered thoughts that had long lain dormant and I have again used this whenever I can. Something small can be made meatier and placed in a story. Exploding the moment is a technique authors use in which a moment that could easily be described in a sentence or two is stretched out and exploded with details. Sometimes the moment might be only a split-second of action! The “exploded moment” is much longer than the moment would actually be in real time. So one small scent can trigger a memory that can be explored and exploded to fill one full story.

Writing about your life is also about coming to a fresh understanding if it at an early age, when you think you know yourself pretty well.

Novelist Stephen King has said, “ I write to find out what I think.” (King, 11 Oct 2012)

He means that until you set an experience down on paper, until you ponder the perfect words to describe it, you can’t fully appreciate or understand it.

Yellow Plastic Bike

In all my stories I wanted to use conflict and contrast. In the book “A Writing handbook,” it says: “ If your writing is to engage a reader’s attention and hold their interest, your original source material needs to be carefully honed and refined.” (Black, 30 Jun 2010) (Page 14)   

In my story, “Yellow Plastic Bike,” I wanted the theme to be based on how small I was to Janet, my sister, but also how little I knew of her illness. I decided to use arms, after I hit Janet with the bike, I tried to place my arms around her. This was my way of trying to protect her, and when she was having the operation I ended the story with the same thing.

I wanted to show in this story the key points, and also what kind of response I wanted the reader to have. I wanted the emotions of love to shine through the text.

Stephen King said he looks for ‘resonance’: the thing that will linger in the reader’s mind and heart at the end of a story. (King, 11 Oct 2012) (page 255).

A ‘Game of Two Halves’, but ‘Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet’.

Strange Alliances

Publishing and Social Media Networking at the London Book Fair 2013.

Now the LBF dust has settled, it’s a good time to reflect on the two seminars on social networking that were run back-to-back at the London Book Fair 2013. ‘How to Build Social and Brand Equity on a Shoestring’, delivered by Chris Hamilton-Emery, Director of Salt and a distinguished poet (he publishes with Arco) and small-publisher authors Christina James, Elizabeth Baines and Katy Evans-Bush, was the first. Snapping at its heels came ‘Social Networking: Authors Have Their Say’, with authors Jonathan Grimwood (Canongate), Elif Shafak (book fair author of the day), Phil Earle (Puffin) and Signe Johansen (Scandilicious / Saltyard Books) on the panel.

How to Build Social and Brand Equity on a Shoestring

Chris Hamilton-Emery (responsible for the Salt Blog Salt^ed) began the seminar by talking about how…

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Getting down to the writing.

Writing a set of short stories can be problematic, especially as I want the general theme to stay the same throughout the book. This means I have to be quite organized in the way I perform this writing task. I managed to accomplish this by deciding who the main characters in these stories were.

• Myself
• Mum
• Dad
• Janet (sister)
• Arnold (brother)
• Grans
• Granddads

Then I set about formulating ideas for as many stories has I could remember. I didn’t go too deep into the stories, more like.

 

• Dad’s ulcers burst.
• Our Holiday in Blackpool
• Mum gets Alzheimer’s.
• What the world was like when I was a child.

When I had managed to plot about twenty stories, using the free writing technique I had been introduced to in many of my classes, I began to accumulate first drafts for these stories. I have extended some of them, including more, so it would fit my novel.