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.