Displaying the True Self

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest,
how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or
humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't
live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't
 love enough. Nothing else really counts at all
                                                                      Ted Hughes

There's lots of talk about honesty in memoir writing--being true to circumstance, event, facts, experience. Write as an honorable journalist when getting down the facts, for sure. And there's talk about being honest about who we really are to our readers, about creating a narrator who discards artifice and bluff. 

How can that be done? How does a writer find that strong, original voice?

Consider the memoirist's challenge in writing herself: Which face is the original one? The one for the game--fierce and ready to attack? The one for the in-laws--cooperative, non-judgmental most of the time? The one on the phone with a good friend--profane and sharply disdainful of foolishness? The one in front of the classroom--calm, all-seeing, open? Or the one in an empty house, lying in a hot bathtub holding a glass of Syrah, murmuring to the child inside, very softly and kindly about those troubling incidents on the playground in the third grade. 

Every memoirist brings the child and the adult to the composition of memory, whether it appears as explicit or implicit in the narration. Sometimes the duality and dynamic occur in the tension between the experiences of older protagonist--a young adult and an older adult.

Here's Maria Popova in a recent Brain Pickings post: 

Four decades later, 23 years after Sylvia Plath took her own life at the age of 30, Ted Hughes (1930--1998) wrote to their 24 years old son, Nicholas. The letter, found in Letters of Ted Hughes is superb...this particular passage speaking to the beautiful vulnerability of our inner child and its longing to be seen, heard, let loose is an absolutely exquisite articulation of the human condition--don't let the length and density deter you from absorbing it, for one you do, it'll saturate every cell of your soul. 

The excerpt from the Ted Hughes letter:

When I came to Lake Victoria, it was quite obvious to me that in some of the most important ways you are much more mature than I am...But in many other ways obviously you are still childish--how could you not be, you alone among mankind? It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them. Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world and the crush of circumstances. And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet, we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making "no contact." But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and when they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child. Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the more efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self--struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence--you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. 

Hughes' letter is insightful on so many levels. What interests me here is his insistence that we interact with others on a level that recognizes each person's inner child. That perspective is usually too indulgent, too full of soft psychology for me, but there is something important here. Fiction writers create characters; memoirists create narrators. The challenge for the writer/narrator is to portray the writer's true voice. And, because we have so many--we code switch all the time--how do we access that truth?

We can portray ourselves as ideal, clever people. We can write smart, competent narrators. We can write from outside our venerable impenetrable armor. We can skim the surface. We can amaze and dazzle. Do these, and experience the hollow loss of connection.

OR

We can write as adults who "let loose" the person inside, the innocent, the person once unaffected by the anticipations of our society and culture, the person who struggles daily to overcome weakness, slogs along constantly learning how to live. It takes some work to summon the genuine self as we may have buried it--during decades of disregarding realities, years lost in the seas of denial, learned indulgence in fears, disappointments, victim hood. 

Very often the memoirist's access to the genuine self is stymied by pride. If we cannot find room to forgive our parents for their inadequacies, we will not find room to forgive ourselves for ours. This one achievement--forgiving and moving on--will do more for competent and meaningful memoir writing than all the techniques of craft you may employ.

Memoirists write as adults who have made peace with the past, people who have done the homework of reflection and meaning-making, narrators who can explain a small part of this complex world to readers. And we write as children, bringing heart to a reader, showing each other how, without guile, to live boldly and to love deeply. 

Wonder, wander, write--always. 

Researching Story and Subject

As for my next book, I am going to hold myself from writing it 

till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a 

ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. 

Last week I wrote about field researching a subject before writing, before deciding what direction a narration will take. I wrote that because that's what I'm doing: I know my subject, but don't yet know the story that will drive it. In one way, the story will be illustrated by the subject, in this case a specific landscape. On the other hand, the subject will direct the story. I hope one will have the same weight as the other, that story and subject will be balanced.

So what does it look like to "see where the research takes us," to "trust our instincts"? It's the same endeavor whether you are researching the subject or the story, whether you are exploring externally or internally.

First realize that drafting/composing/researching, in whichever order it takes, requires that we consider both the subject--the physical world of the narration, and the story--the life event you are documenting.

• The subject for a book I recently recommended, Anthony Doerr's Four Seasons in Rome, was the ancient city. The story was Doerr's experience there. He exposed both subject and story--the place and his personal connection to the place. 
• In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, the subject is the Pacific Coast Trail, the story her physical, emotional and mental struggle to recover and heal. Neither would communicate without the other. 

In either case:
Look for patterns in your subject and story. Similar to the recurrent designs in wallpaper or fabric, patterns in human behavior make the person.

• Notice repetitions of action, speech, thought, dress if you are establishing a character in your memoir. Notice patterns as well in the physical world--shapes, colors, sounds, smells, flora and fauna.
• Story comes from our observation, documentation and meaning-making of these patterns. This is actually an understatement since nearly all maturation--mentally, emotionally and physically--comes from our awareness of patterns in our own behavior.

Look for a story sense in the subject, a pattern we intrinsically know--that understanding of beginning, middle and end. More than that, look for rising action, consequence, solution or resolution (sometimes acceptance of no solution). Look into the history of any subject or story--find primary sources as much as possible.

Make continual connection between the narrator's (the writer's) perspective and the story's unfolding action, between the subject's effect on the narrator and its effect on others. E. M.Forster said it, in his famous epigraph to Howards End: "only connect." If we do that, merely that, we begin to make meaning.

Wonder, wander, write--always.

Field Researching Your World

Madeleine Winch, Reverie

Keri Smith's list in my last post is all about the journey, not the destination, about the process of art, not the finished product. Many writers will say they feel most alive during the writing--completely absorbed in the messy process of research, drafting, revising, polishing.

That is my experience completely. Once something of mine is published, the result feels like an artifact, unfamiliar and clearly void of its organic, dynamic, fluid genesis.

Today's question:  At what point in the luscious organic process is the best time to perform research? My experience has been to begin writing and research the subject as I need information--background details, exact dates, historical or literary references. If a story is pushing you forward, get to it and research as needed. 

The most repeated advice for writer is probably this: Write about what you know! And you should. Use knowledge you already have to ground the telling. This works well in fiction and nonfiction.

How about this: Write about what you don't know! One thing I'm pretty sure of is that the more knowledge and life experience I gain, the less I really know. If I ask my 98-year old father, "Are you sure?" about any statement he makes, from what he wants for breakfast to the reason wood is warping, his answer ifs always the same: "I'm not sure about anything" I get it. For sure.

Kurt Vonnegut's advice: Find a subject you care about and which you feel in your heart others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

The best thing about writing, for me, is discovering new ideas as they formulate on the page. It's what makes writing rewarding and hard--allowing uncertainty its own autonomy.

Try this: Instead of getting right to the story-telling, get out and do the field work. Immerse yourself in it--look, consider, observe, document, trace, collect, uncover. 

Consider taking enough time--wandering, wondering, quiet, noisy time--looking for something that moves you enough to write for months. Maybe you need to travel to the South to meet obscure cousins or across the Atlantic to the old country to find a grandmother's childhood home. Maybe you need to read every edition of the hometown paper to find that crime story that was kept secret for your entire childhood. Maybe you need to shelf anxiety and telephone the one relative no one in the family has spoken to in decades.  

Have the courage to acknowledge the value of those subjects that are so important to you, those personally cherished ideas and interests about which you might feel "in your heart others should care about" as well. 

See where it takes you. Trust your instinct for a story worth unearthing, for unrelated details that might congeal into a new whole. Take courage along, the courage to wait for the story in the subject to reveal itself.