Life gets in the way by Sheena Wilkinson

Regular readers might remember that, about eighteen months ago, I started writing memoir, using this blog as an opportunity to check in with myself, to hold myself accountable, and even to tease out some of the complicated feelings I had about putting my own life on the page. 

I haven't written in this vein for some time, ironically because, I suppose, life has rather got in the way: 'real' life with home and family, which includes pets of course, and professional life, which this year has included not one but two novel projects. Mrs Hart's Marriage Bureau was published in March 2023; I have written the first draft of a sequel, AND I've just delivered my next book, another children's historical, to a new publisher. So I haven't not been writing; I've just been avoiding truth-telling. 

The memoir project, which I had been so excited about, seems to have dropped down the list of priorities. At the time of writing I have completed about 30,000 words, enough to feel like a viable project, but oh, such a very long way from completion.

I haven't written any memoir for a few months now, apart from occasionally reading read over the essay-in-progress, which is already over 10,000 words and nowhere near finished, so I really don't know what on earth I could do with it. Also, it's about religion: probably a hard sell. 

The fact is, writing fiction is so much easier -- both aesthetically, and emotionally. Of course, you have to make up stories and characters, but that's what I've been doing all my life. Putting real life and people on the page feels so much more complicated. The aspect of my new life which is most challenging, and perhaps therefore most interesting, is being a stepmother having never had, or especially wanted, children -- but it's not something I can write about. I am happy to discuss all sorts of private things, but writing about a child who didn't have a choice about the situation is a line I won't cross. 

That's not to say I have given up on the project, or that there hasn't been encouragement along the way.  Luckily there are some competitions for short memoir, and I've always loved the discipline of a competition deadline. The best memoir award around seems to be the Briport Award, but as a writer with an agent I'm not eligible for that. But 'Saddo', a story about doing things alone all my adult life, won second prize in the Fish Short Memoir Award 2022, and 'Plan B: 38 Pictures of Irene' won first prize in the inaugural Plaza Prizes Memoir First Chapter Award. I was very tickled when the judge of the latter, Toby Litt, commented that the narrative voice was 'not straightforwardly likeable'. This felt like success: that essay, about learning to find my place in the home of the dead woman whose husband I married, was probably the rawest thing I have ever written. I don't always like the person I was at that time in my life, though I think I understand her better for having written about her. 

And maybe, now that I have checked in again, I will write about her some more.