At 49 I felt compelled to write a book. Not something I’d always wanted to do. I figured maybe it was just time to finally record all those stories about my ancestors who had been in South Africa since the 1800s, as well as my own stories about growing up in a small Zambian copper mining town; plus a two-year stint on a sisal plantation in Zimbabwe. This was before the two countries were independent, when colonial power held sway, when the bush was full of animals. And then there were all those road trips my family took to the Congo, Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania. The time an elephant chased our car for over five miles, forcing my dad to reverse down an excuse for a dirt road before the elephant gave up. The time we spent in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro with a crazy Belgian who kept wild animals for film-makers’ use; as well as that episode in Kenya when the Mau Maus attacked the cattle ranch where we were staying with a family my dad had befriended along the way. I had a lot to write about. What I didn’t know was that I intuitively chose writing “to take fuller possession of the reality of my life,” to paraphrase Ted Hughes.
Mau Mau
So I started writing, most days after work and on weekends. I agree with Kurt Vonnegut who said writing made him “feel like an armless and legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” Three years later I ended up with a 500 page memoir of flashbacks. The poor volunteer reviewer from the National Writer’s Association I joined penciled these little round faces with downturned mouths in the margins, complete with dialogue: “Oh nooo, not another flashback.” The other reviews I received convinced me just how much I had to learn about writing. Starting over, I bought and read a library of how-to books and took classes; I learnt about structure, plot, conflict, pacing, and theme. I joined critique groups and re-wrote.
This time I started with an incident when I was poisoned by rebels as a six-year old in Zimbabwe and turned my messy tome into a young adult novel and sequel, with two teenage protagonists, a black boy and a white girl. The story had political and spiritual overtones, lots of action, but the white girl and her family were essentially me and my family. The black protagonist represented Africa and her people.
An interested agent told me that the story was a good one, except that it lacked a unifying purpose; I hadn’t found the heart of the story. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know how to pull it all together, how to find that elusive heart. I kept writing. Only now I began to realize that I hadn’t connected in any meaningful way to my characters. I had plumbed the depths of the story’s message and meaning, I had plot points and a climax; I had my people say words that revealed character and furthered the plot, but I didn’t know how they felt about all the conflicts they were going through, how they felt about each other – not in any meaningful way. That was because I had avoided my own feelings from the past. It was too painful. But in order to find the heart of my story I had to do so.
I immersed myself in the past and all those feelings I had suppressed. The white girl became more vulnerable, a little less reactive and rebellious; her mother more loving and sympathetic than my own distant mother had ever been; the father more fallible than I’d always believed my own father to be. Overall every character grew, including Africa, a country with which I’ve always had a love-hate relationship. In the end, what I managed to produce was a fully realized coming-of-age story. Both for the protagonists, but especially for me. Through the power of words, I had set down roots in time and explored my own personal myths, uncovered their purpose and grounded myself in a way I might not have been able to do otherwise.
You can follow Rossandra’s blog: “A former bushbaby’s take on writing, appreciating life and everything in between” at http://rossandrawhite.com
Rossandra lives in a Hobbit house, along with her two Staffordshire bull terriers, Fergie and Jake, where she writes about them, her life in Laguna Beach and her African past.
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Thanks for this post. I will never write another memoir because I’ve been on this journey far too long. Every day I say “I think I’ve got it,” and then alternative days, “This sucks.” I’m happy to see the process and read about others’ processes.
Elisabeth, it is a very long, hard road at times. I can understand why you feel that way. I hope that after some time out, you’re energy renews and that you’ll find a new way to write which invigorates you and is less draining.
Take good care of yourself and best wishes with your writing journey.
I read somewhere this quote: “The personal is universal.” It seems to be what you are talking about here, Rossandra. It’s when we reveal ourselves, whether fiction or non-fiction, that people are drawn in by our words. Thank you for sharing your insights and writing struggles. I can totally relate and it’s nice to know others struggle with some of the same writing challenges.
Thanks everyone for your comments and thank you so very much Cate for featuring me.
Rossandra, it’s a pleasure. You’re welcome back any time.
My apologies for being slow in moderating comments. We have just been through a cyclone and our city is still partly flooded. It’s been chaos here for the last five days and we’re still cleaning up and trying to get back to normal. We are hoping that normal arrives back as soon as possible.
If you are able, please donate to the Red Cross Flood Appeal. http://www.redcross.org.au/qld-floods-2013.aspx Many people had everything they own destroyed two year ago and have only just gotten back on their feet… to be wiped out again. Any help you can give will be gratefully received, and the Red Cross is a reliable organisation.
I had to smile when I read about your first draft.
Leaving an echo to Sharon’s words above. As I draft my memoir, I often wonder if I’d be better off writing it as a novel. You’ve given me something to consider. Thanks, Cate and Rossandra, for such a great post.
Thank you Cate for hosting this important post, and thank you Rossandra for making the point about connecting with emotion so clear. It’s a lesson many of us are working on. Do I correctly understand that in order to fully convey your truth, you made the switch from memoir to fiction? The longer I read and write, the more clear it’s becoming to me that fiction is the writer’s Photoshop, enabling us to add and subtract elements, blur some and sharpen others, swap and saturate color, etc. to an extent not acceptable within the framework of memoir “truth” and the limitations of a single lens. Sometimes Truth needs to be set free of personal constraints. Bravo for you for showing us why. Your book sounds amazing.
“Fiction as the writer’s photoshop.” That’s a great description Sharon. Thank you for visiting and sharing with us.
The main point I get from your excellent post, Rossandra is how important it is to dig deeply into our own experience to get to the core message and doing so can be extremely painful. Therein lies the ability to convey story and transform and heal both oneself and the reader. If, however, it is too painful, one has to decide if crafting it as fiction may be a better choice. You do have an amazing story. Thank you for sharing your writing experience and thank you Cate for featuring Rossandra.
Hi Sharon, I tried to “reply” to your posting but it wouldn’t let me! Anyway, here goes, again. Thanks so much for your comment. No, actually I fictionalized my story in order to include the African (black) POV. I wanted to make it a bigger story. Part of it though, I’m sure, was to avoid tackling the pains of the past head-on. But either way, even if you do fictionalize your story you still have to dig deep, that’s the only way to make the story real. As an aside, I must say, fiction taught me a lot about “story” and really, that’s what a memoir is, a story, complete with drama and dialogue. But then I found out when I wrote my memoir, Loveyoubye (recently completed and with a small press right now), that it was hard for me to let go and “tell,” because in fiction it’s all about “showing.” I also discovered that with memoir you get to “reflect”–make sense of the experiences. A very powerful tool missing in fiction.