Hi y’all, I’m getting excited for the solstice and the gentle turning inward this season brings for me nowadays. Reading and daydreaming more, pouring hot water over rosemary sprigs for tea, watching the birds at the feeders, pondering bare branches of trees across the way, putting my phone in the next room more often while I sit with the blank page—these are my goals. It’s been an exciting year for me, but I need to ground myself more fully in my work and my intentions for it. I need to let
Loved reading about your genre quandary, Maud. I’ve been in this mire my whole life. When I studied creative writing in the mid 70s, then a new program, there was not even a category for a memoir. It was fiction, poetry, or nonfiction and that was it. Fiction got all the respect, my writing dismissed as being “too personal.”
And I adored this Annie Lennox video! So exciting! She is being the Queen of the Revels. If you’ve never seen a Christmas Revels, now often re-dubbed Midwinter Revels, it is a unique and wonderful celebration in which I’ve participated for 30 years. I’ve reviewed many of the California Revels shows on my website, and there are several troupes around the country.
Boy, do I understand your conflicts between writing fiction and nonfiction! My solution for most of 2022 was not to write at all. I am not proud of that now but I did read more books than ever and as of today, I am actually just a tad burnt out on reading and feeling ready to write again starting on 1/1 2023. Going to your Millions piece now.
I'm so glad I have you on Substack since I left Twitter and it's almost killing me. Thank you for this solstice post! (Does this comment timing give away how long it took me to get back to the email I'd saved for when I was sufficiently free to click over and read it?)
Side note: One of the strange trivia memories from my childhood is a question about where the comma is supposed to be in God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, and I didn't understand it back then, but it feels right to me now.
Thanks for this, I really relate to the personal vs imaginative when it comes to writing. I’ve written some powerful things about myself and my life, but right now I’m in a rut where I’m sick of my own life and my own problems, if that makes sense. I’m not sure where my drive to write will go next, but I’m willing to wait and see. I’m still a writer, even when I’m not writing. I know this now!
Take a look at the format Annie Ernaux uses for her “not a memoir” approach, not content but narrative and her use of I, she, her, Annie. Interesting for ya’ll to think about. Happy Tidings!
I have had a flash realization that maybe it's not a coincidence that this disenchantment with "trauma plots" is closely coinciding with the discovery of intergenerational trauma and demands for compensation and repairs. Seems very convenient for the status quo to begin saying trauma plots are getting old and annoying. And what plot isn't based on some kind of trauma, anyway? It's been this way since forever, and no one complains when Stendhal or Zola does it. I think what's called for is a new way of doing it. I just heard a really interesting interview on NPR about the latest Giselle ballet, in which for once Giselle doesn't die or lose her mind over a betrayal, and the plot instead leads to social justice.
As for my difficulties with autobiography and fiction writing, I've been lied to so much about my family that it's actually almost impossible to know what's true, so I've felt free to turn it all into fiction in one project, embellishing and adding to it (I've got pirates and fugitive war criminals and the lost emeralds of Atuahualpa in it now) while continuing to do my research for what's true. And somehow, this even feels like keeping up family tradition.
Loved reading about your genre quandary, Maud. I’ve been in this mire my whole life. When I studied creative writing in the mid 70s, then a new program, there was not even a category for a memoir. It was fiction, poetry, or nonfiction and that was it. Fiction got all the respect, my writing dismissed as being “too personal.”
And I adored this Annie Lennox video! So exciting! She is being the Queen of the Revels. If you’ve never seen a Christmas Revels, now often re-dubbed Midwinter Revels, it is a unique and wonderful celebration in which I’ve participated for 30 years. I’ve reviewed many of the California Revels shows on my website, and there are several troupes around the country.
Boy, do I understand your conflicts between writing fiction and nonfiction! My solution for most of 2022 was not to write at all. I am not proud of that now but I did read more books than ever and as of today, I am actually just a tad burnt out on reading and feeling ready to write again starting on 1/1 2023. Going to your Millions piece now.
I'm so glad I have you on Substack since I left Twitter and it's almost killing me. Thank you for this solstice post! (Does this comment timing give away how long it took me to get back to the email I'd saved for when I was sufficiently free to click over and read it?)
Side note: One of the strange trivia memories from my childhood is a question about where the comma is supposed to be in God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, and I didn't understand it back then, but it feels right to me now.
Thanks for this, I really relate to the personal vs imaginative when it comes to writing. I’ve written some powerful things about myself and my life, but right now I’m in a rut where I’m sick of my own life and my own problems, if that makes sense. I’m not sure where my drive to write will go next, but I’m willing to wait and see. I’m still a writer, even when I’m not writing. I know this now!
Take a look at the format Annie Ernaux uses for her “not a memoir” approach, not content but narrative and her use of I, she, her, Annie. Interesting for ya’ll to think about. Happy Tidings!
I have had a flash realization that maybe it's not a coincidence that this disenchantment with "trauma plots" is closely coinciding with the discovery of intergenerational trauma and demands for compensation and repairs. Seems very convenient for the status quo to begin saying trauma plots are getting old and annoying. And what plot isn't based on some kind of trauma, anyway? It's been this way since forever, and no one complains when Stendhal or Zola does it. I think what's called for is a new way of doing it. I just heard a really interesting interview on NPR about the latest Giselle ballet, in which for once Giselle doesn't die or lose her mind over a betrayal, and the plot instead leads to social justice.
As for my difficulties with autobiography and fiction writing, I've been lied to so much about my family that it's actually almost impossible to know what's true, so I've felt free to turn it all into fiction in one project, embellishing and adding to it (I've got pirates and fugitive war criminals and the lost emeralds of Atuahualpa in it now) while continuing to do my research for what's true. And somehow, this even feels like keeping up family tradition.