WRITING THE LIFE

I’ve never been too keen on doing much Life Writing. I do Daily Pages, when I get up early enough to fit it into the morning. If you’re not familiar with Daily Pages (there are many and varied names for this), the idea is that you sit down and let words come out, spontaneously, for however long works for you, but not too long, because then you start self-editing, and that ruins the whole point of the exercise. 

I find Daily Pages particularly helpful when I’m stuck, either with writing or life in general. If I can’t force anything coherent out, I play games. I do mirror writing, or drag words diagonally down the page, or in a circle. At least I’ve got squiggles on paper, and it’s reassuring and freeing to be completely childlike for a bit. 

Daily Pages are for my eyes only, though. Even when they’re just games, they’re a part of me that is just for me. It’s like the Diary I kept from when I was about nine or ten until my late teens. I’m not sure why I stopped keeping it. Maybe I just got too caught up in living life to want to spend time recording it. 

A few years ago I ‘downsized’ from the semi I’d lived in for twenty-three years, and chucked the various notebooks containing the Diary into a skip. Life had been stressful for a number of years, and I wanted a complete reset. Also, I didn’t fancy my kids reading the inner workings of my teenage mind, should I shuffle off the mortal coil at short notice. 

I also threw out old love letters. We had handwritten love letters in my youth. Some came with photos of the boyfriend of the time, but dick pics were there none. It was a different age. Or maybe it was just that none of my boyfriends had a Polaroid camera and taking the film into Boots would have got them arrested.

The only thing I actually miss about the Diary, or the letters, are their fact-checking facilities. It’s not that I don’t remember the past, it’s - do I remember it right? 

I’m an only child so I haven’t got siblings to compare notes with. I spent most of my childhood abroad, because of my Dad’s job, and I’m not in contact with anyone I knew then. It all changed after my teens – I’m still in touch with a few people from Uni days and having lived in the same city for nearly fifty years now, I’m not short of people to reminisce with. 

I’m fascinated by the process of memory, how we remember, and why we choose to remember some things and allow others to float away. It’s a recurring theme in my writing. It doesn’t take a therapist to point out that this fascination is probably because I feel unmoored from parts of my own past. It’s as though the only existence those parts have is in the images of them I hold, or possibly create. 

That could have advantages, of course. I could make up all sorts of bollocks, and no-one would ever know. I was the most popular girl everywhere I went! Blokes fell at my feet! I was bravely outspoken on matters of social conscience from the time I could form words! I had amazing taste in clothes and boy, could I rock a green lurex halter-neck maxi with towering black platform shoes!

Actually, I didn’t look too bad in the green lurex. I fell off the platform shoes and slipped a disc. 

I do have the letters my parents sent me when they were abroad and I was in the UK, doing my A Levels and then going to Uni. They kept all my letters as well, so I now have both sets. This gives a timeline but obviously, my letters were heavily censored versions of my life. ‘I had a great time at Mary’s birthday party last Saturday!’ I got shit-faced and didn’t wake up in my own bed. In all probability.

Who the hell was Mary? 

So Life Writing has always scared me a bit. How can I do it? I can’t give a reliable account of the first twenty years of my own life. Also, who’s interested in some old woman burbling on about her dodgy neo-colonialist childhood? 

It took me far longer than it should to realise that Life Writing is present in every story we concoct. Our memories are writing aids. Unless we’re actually writing a fact-based autobiography, it doesn’t really matter if we remember precisely how we felt at a particular time. The feelings we have now about a place, person, or experience from the past are the truth about the effect those things had on our lives. If that effect was overwhelmingly negative, it might help us to re-examine what facts we have and reshape our own narratives. But there’s a reason we remember things the way we do. We have to discover why that particular story has always felt like the right one.

And because we’re writers and we plunder everyone’s experiences, including our own, for material, the question of why we choose to frame our own narratives in a certain way helps us give our characters substance. We lend them bits of our lives that fit. 

If we can get them to play along, of course. Characters are stroppy buggers. If they don’t like the bits of our lives we’re offering, they soon let us know. 

Thanks for reading. See you soon! 

Jane x

What I’m reading: 

Butter, by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton (Published by 4th Estate). The English version of this was published last year and got great reviews. I’ve only just started it so can’t really say what I think of it yet, but the first seventeen pages are very promising indeed! 

The Kraken Wakes, by John Wyndham (Penguin). Another of my nostalgia reads. This was the first John Wyndham I read – I must have been twelve or thirteen. My Mum was a big Wyndham fan and I’m pretty sure she bought it for me. Wyndham is a very underrated writer, in my humble opinion. He’s often been denigrated for his ‘cosy catastrophes’ but there’s a lot more to him than that. People have been scathing about his conventional female characters but there’s a lot more to them as well, and if you want a searing comment on the exploitation of women through advertising and propaganda, read his short story Consider Her Ways. It was written in 1956, so it’s not cutting edge now, but it was then. I read it in my teens and all that pretty much passed me by. I read it again in my thirties and I was gobsmacked. 

THE GAME OF THE NAME

It may come as a shock to you (or you may not give a stuff), but Jane Ayrie isn’t my given name. Well, the Jane part is, but the surname is completely made up. 

My original surname is perfectly unobjectionable, but it’s also very common. In 1954 a lot of its owners apparently had a revelation and decided calling their daughters ‘Jane’ was the best idea ever. Far too many of these daughters, if you ask me, became academics or writers. There’s bloody millions of them out there. I am vain enough to have Googled my name on a few occasions and it’s like looking at one of those big shoals of herring you see on ‘The Blue Planet’. They’re all little individuals with their hopes, dreams and ambitions, but no big fish is going to bother distinguishing one from the other.

I’m very fond of my first name. It’s my identifier. My parents chose it with love. I’ve never really got the fuss about family surnames, though – they’re just accidents of history and if you need a name to remind you which family you belong to, maybe you should be looking for another family. I suppose if it’s something extraordinary you might feel an attachment to it, or it might be important as a signifier of your culture, but ordinary run of the mill names like mine really don’t warrant the fuss.

My kids have both parents’ surnames, which was still a bit of a novelty when they were born. I was amazed at the number of people who asked, in horrified tones, ‘But what about when they have children? Will those kids have three surnames? Or four??’ To which the obvious answers are: a) why should you care? and b) in my experience, people generally have sufficient gumption to sort out names for their kids. I might not like some of those names, but that’s not my business either. 

The names we choose for ourselves, professionally or personally, are very significant. The reasons for a pseudonym vary: John Le Carré said his position in MI6 made it essential he used a different name, and both the Brontës and Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot) were pretty sure unambiguously female names would hamper their chances of publication. Some writers feel adopting another persona helps them focus when they sit down to put words on the page. I find that. For me, it’s part of ‘going to work’. The non-writer part of me is a directionless slob who, given half a chance, will sit doing crosswords all day, drinking cups of coffee (morning) or tea (afternoon) while nibbling toast (morning) or scones (afternoon). Occasionally this persona will look up to peer through the front window, conveniently placed to observe the coming and goings on the three streets that converge in front of it. Jane Ayrie is the persona who says, ‘Get up, you lazy, nosey bitch. The sodding draft won’t edit itself.’ 

Why people choose particular names, though, is often less clear. Le Carré sometimes said he chose the name because it would stand out, and sometimes said he’d seen it in an advert on the side of a bus. Gloria Jean Watkins chose the name bell hooks (deliberately not capitalised) as a tribute to her much admired great-grandmother. Whatever the reason, there is something about it that clicks with the writer and feels right. It says something about who we are, to ourselves if no-one else.

‘Ayrie’ emerged from fiddling about with my username on a writing website. No great emotional heft, no clever word play, but I knew when I looked at it that it would do the job well. 

I get a similar moment of joy when I discover the right name for a character. I say discover, because I don’t choose characters’ names. I have to wait until they introduce themselves properly. Sometimes they piss me about, trying to fool me with false monikers, but I know when they’re lying. I can see it in their eyes. I know that if I just wait, they will eventually tire of the game and tell me the truth. And then we’re good to go with their story. We don’t get anywhere until they tell me their name.

I find the processes of naming, whether real children, characters, or ourselves, endlessly fascinating. I’d be delighted to hear what you think about it all.

Thanks for reading! 

Jane

What I’m reading: 

Dhalgren, by Samuel R Delany (I have a 50 year old copy published by Bantam, so I don’t know who publishes it now). This was first published in 1975, so I’m giving it an anniversary re-read. It’s been compared to Ulysses, but don’t let that put you off. I was gripped from the first word, which is not something I can say about Ulysses. There is a story, about a drifter, the kid, or Kidd, who fetches up in a place called Bellona, with no memory. From there on reality is fluid, narrative is circular, narrators are unreliable (or are they?). Language is beautiful and at times incoherent. I’ve read it many times and I hope this time to work out what it’s actually about. Nah, who am I kidding?

Samuel R Delany is one of my favourite writers, and this is my favourite of his books. It’s both revered and excoriated, and Delany does tend to be a Marmite author. If you don’t know his stuff, it’s probably best to start with his magnificent short stories, and there’s a lovely collection titled Aye, and Gomorrah published by Vintage. For my money, Delany is one of the most brilliant speculative fiction writers we have, but I’ll shut up now, because I could go on about him for ever.

Elidor by Alan Garner (originally published by Collins, but still out there somewhere). Another anniversary re-read! Elidor came out in 1965, and I got it for Christmas when I was eleven. I have re-read it every couple of years since. A group of kids in Manchester slip through a portal into another world and return as guardians of ‘treasures’ that must be protected to ensure the realm of Elidor can be saved from the powers of darkness. But darkness keeps seeping into 1960s Manchester…

This was my first introduction to what I suppose would now be called Urban Fantasy. I was gripped, scared out of my wits, and filled with the desire to write stories like that. These days, the fact that a group of kids, at least two of whom are pre-teen, can wander about Manchester day and night with no means of contacting their parents or anyone else, while no-one raises an eyebrow, seems as fantastical as the interdimensional baddies chasing them. Alan Garner is one of our greatest story-tellers, and this is one of his best. If you had the misfortune to see the bloody awful BBC TV adaptation in 1995, don’t let it put you off. It bore no resemblance whatsoever to the book.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

“Hello,” says the new person whom Imposter Syndrome and I have just met. They run their eyes over me, decide I obviously qualify for a bus pass, and ask, “Are you still working, then?”

Imposter Syndrome takes a step back. Real life is nothing to do with her. “No, no I’m retired,” I say breezily. “Packed all that work nonsense in, ha ha, best decision I ever made, ha ha, lady of leisure now, ho ho.”

If the new person is a similar age to me they nod vigorously and say, “Well, quite, don’t know about leisure though, grandchildren keep you busy enough, ha ha.” 

Imposter Syndrome lets me take this one too. “Lucky enough not to have grandchildren yet, hee hee,” I say. 

The new person looks at me as if I have just revealed horns and a tail. “So what do you do with your time, then?” they ask icily.

“Um,” says Imposter Syndrome, reluctantly stepping up. “I, er, I write a bit, ha ha. You know. Creative Writing. Keeps me occupied…” She trails off.

“What sort of thing do you write?” the new person asks, with a vague flicker of interest.

“Oh…stuff…you know…a bit of the supernatural, a bit of science fiction, a bit of…well, all sorts really.”

The new person is well brought up and politely feigns interest. “Are you writing something at the moment?”

Imposter Syndrome shuffles our collective feet. “Well, yes, sort of…”

“What’s it about?”

“Um, it’s a sort of ghost story, only not, it’s about ghosts that aren’t ghosts…”

The new person gives us one last chance. “Have you published anything?”

Imposter Syndrome perks up. “Well, yes, actually, I’ve had stories in several anthologies and I’m a contributing editor to an international online writing community and I…”

“Anything I might have read?”

“Um…probably not, unless you’re a fan of small literary magazines and online writing communities.”

At this point the new person usually discovers they have an urgent appointment with either the bar or the toilet. 

Of course, if the new person is of a younger generation, the conversation doesn’t get beyond “I’m retired” because the younger person gives me the look that says, “It’s OK for your fucking generation, Boomer, mine will never get the chance to bloody retire,” and of course they’re right. Neither I nor Imposter Syndrome have an answer to that one.

It took me while, though, to realise the answer I always give to “What’s it about?” was entirely wrong. It should be, always, “I don’t know. I haven’t finished it yet.”

I was completely astounded when, after going to a critique group for a while, someone said of my contribution for that month, “Of course, your usual themes are there.”

“My what?”

Everyone else looked at me as if I were stupid. “Your usual themes. Your thing about the past seeping into the present, and the process of memory, and intergenerational buggins. It’s all there.”

“But it’s a story about a cat having a conversation with an alien mouse.”

They were very kind. “Dear, you could write a story about a brick having a conversation with a garden gate, and all that stuff would be in it. That’s your thing.”

“I’ve got a thing?”

Some writers start out with a thing, a theme, an Idea, and fit their stories around it. They know who they are, what they want to say, and pretty much how they want to say it. I envy them. They undoubtedly save a lot of time, and their Imposter Syndrome is probably smaller and less vocal than mine. I mean, how can I have a ‘theme’? I’m about giving people a bit of a jump scare, or making them laugh. A conversation, or an image of someone engaged in a particular activity, or a character name, or even a title for a story, come into my mind and demand I find out what’s going on. I don’t start off with a theme, or an Idea. I just like playing about with words.

I also struggle with endings, but I know I’m not alone there. It has, though, taken me far longer than it should to realise that if I’m struggling with an ending, it’s because I don’t really know what the story’s about. 

I’m not much of a one for tidy endings. I like a bit of ambivalence and ambiguity, but there’s a difference between ambiguity and leaving your reader asking, “What the fuck was that all about?”, and not as in, “Oooh, I wasn’t expecting that, I’m going to go back and read it again, because otherwise this will keep me awake all night”, more your “Well, that’s a few hours of my life I’ll never get back”.

There’s a story I’ve been working on for, oh, a number of years now. Literally, years. It started off with an image of a man standing in the middle of a road. I knew his name, and it was a very unusual name, and I knew he was in rural America. The story evolved and I realised it was related to a meeting I had with someone in my teens. I also realised it was important to me, and I thought it was about a significant World Event. I couldn’t get the ending right at all. 

I rewrote the bloody thing. I took it to a couple of critique groups. They all said the ending didn’t work, but no-one was able to put their finger on exactly what was wrong. I put it away. I got it out again. I put it away again. I asked myself what it was about, and told myself it’s bloody obvious what it’s about. I got impatient with both me and the story and put it away once more.

I recently got the damn thing out again and asked an American friend, someone I know through the wonderful online writing community ABC Tales, if he would read it and make sure the dialogue, terminology etc was appropriate to the US. Also, any hints on an ending. He was kind enough to say yes. I went through it once more, before I sent it, shouted at my shit ending, then sat down and asked myself, “Yeah, but what is it about?”, and realised I’d pretty much forgotten why I originally wrote it.  

I jotted down a few questions in a sort of a list.  (I am a bit wary of lists. I always associate them with a former partner who couldn’t get dressed without making a list, but at my age they’re a necessity. They really do give you some insight into the perennial question of why you’ve walked into this room.) I stepped back, literally, staring at the list lying on the table, and demanded, “What? Just what?”

Quarter of an hour later it gave up teasing and produced an answer. After which the ending wrote itself. 

There’s a thrill in finding out what our stories are actually about, but I also find it disconcerting. I’m seventy. I always assumed that by this point I’d have things reasonably worked out. I am this person, these things are important to me, these things can be left behind. But that’s the problem with this writing lark. It has a habit of asking, “But why this? And why now?”  

I’ve learned that sometimes I have to completely discard preconceived ideas of what the story’s about. ‘Kill your darlings’ doesn’t just apply to overripe phrases or meandering dialogue. It can mean the whole concept of the piece. Somewhere in there is the truth of what I’m writing. I’m just too wrapped up in red herrings to see it. Sometimes I may not even want to see it. Sometimes, it takes a while. 

I’m not sure, though, that the next new person Imposter Syndrome and I meet will be overimpressed when we tell them, “Haven’t got the foggiest idea what I’m writing about, come back in about six months and I’ll tell you. Or hey, buy my book of short stories, when it comes out! The answers to all your questions will be there!”

I think Imposter Syndrome and I need to have some brisk conversations about marketing strategies in social situations before we can quite manage that pitch, though.

Thanks for reading!

Jane

What I’m reading: 

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander (Picador). One of the funniest, most insightful and moving novels I’ve read. Auslander is writing about a diaspora community struggling with identity and tradition in a changing world, but this diaspora community is like no other, and has very good reason to worry about the reaction of others.

Don’t Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier (Penguin). I first read Don’t Look Now decades ago, long before the film came out. It was in another collection then, where it wasn’t even the headline story. I suppose her style is old-fashioned now and yes, she lived in a very different world. But the power of these often strange and eerie stories remains. She was a consummate short story writer.