I can't picture writing straight fiction, set in what our senses insist is the ordinary reality we all live in. If I'm telling a story, it seems to be either fiction set in some speculative reality, or an account of what actually happened.
I've been toying with the idea of writing a memoir. That's why I was interested in attending "A Conversation with Frank McCourt" as part of NYU's alumni weekend last week, since he's someone who's famous for writing a memoir, rather than someone who "wrote" a memoir because he was famous.
Then I tried to read his memoir, Angela's Ashes. It was tbe most depressing thing I"ve ever read in my life. It had me weeping on subway platforms. I still haven't finished it, though I'm close. I had to stop reading it to read Teacher Man, the book the "Conversation" was supposed to be about. I saw a connection between the 2 books, between his inauspicious beginnings in AA (crushing poverty, year after year) and the way, for decades of his life, he seemed to be trying to be anything but what and who he was. I could totally relate to that.
For a week I've written bits of my memoir, turning it over in my mind and writing journal, the way I do with any current project. A miserable week. And picked up where I left off with A New Order of Things by Edward M. Lerner, installment 2 of 4, serialized in June Analog.
Walking home with my daughter in a drizzle this evening, I decided not to focus on the memoir. Maybe a chapter here and there when I'm in a certain mood. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my chest.
Instead, I think I'll work on one or more of the many sci-fi ideas I've had this past year, or maybe a new one.
"K'Choi Gwu ka was old and tired and insane, and she knew it."
A New Order of Things by Edward M. Lerner in June Analog, p. 100
And I can totally relate to that too!
5 comments:
I know I could never write my memoirs (don't particularly want to, anyway) because of the simple fact that whenever I try to insert facets of my own life into my fiction, it becomes all the harder to write. It's never flowed the way my other good stories have, so I don't do it anymore. I've heard from a couple of other writers that it's the same way with them. So, I can only imagine how friggin' hard writing my memoirs would be.
*But*, good luck to you when you do pick it up again. That's a healthy, sane (heh) outlook: a chapter here and there when you're in the mood.
As far as spec vs. straight fiction, I've found with myself that I can't sustain the spec elements in a novel. The one I'm working on now, although a corpse makes an appearance in a garden in the beginning of it, is purely mainstream. It bugged me at first, that I was never going to write a great horror novel, but now I'm cool with it. And sometimes going back and forth between the two, spec and straight, is like taking a breather from one or the other.
(by the way, great quote. I can totally relate, too!)
What I can do, what works well for me, is to insert FEELINGS from my real life into spec fiction. That was part of my insight of yesterday, that so many feelings from real life are right there in the sci-fi novel I'm reading. And my horror story "The Enemy" and my sci-fi story "A Singular Being."
Using one project or type of project to take a breather from another - I think that's another terrific strategy for maintaining sanity.
I synthesize so much of my life and experience into the mysteries I write, though none of the characters are really like me at all, though some of them share my interests. I don't know that I'd want to go stright autobiographical. For the life of me, I can't write decent Sci-Fi or Fantasy, though it's probably the genre I've always enjoyed most.
Hrm, reading over my comment, I should have said that when "I try to insert too many facets of my own life into my fiction, it becomes all the harder to write". Like Cyn, some of my characters share some of my interests.
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