January’s zalon featured guest author and lecturer Lily Dunn whose recent book, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling was included in the Guardian’s list of best memoirs of 2022. “Memoir is characterised by the reflective voice,” said Lily, “and bound up in this stance is the need in the writer to better understand themselves somehow.” Lily spoke about what’s at the heart of a good memoir as well as her process, particularly how fictional technique and the imagination can be applied to non-fiction to create a compelling story. She also shared a brilliant writing exercise to take away (see below). If you’d like to catch up with the zalon recording you can watch on demand here.
Lily Dunn
Something that came up during the Q & A with the audience was the worry of how to write about yourself without writing about other people and if you do, the fear of offending loved ones. Lily suggested to just do it anyway - get a first draft down. Often it can be years until your story is finished or published. Develop and work on the reflective voice. Once you’ve spent time, the longer the better, getting to know and understand your subject then it becomes easier to decide which details to include or leave out. Involve the people in the story with the book. Seek support, even therapy, especially if there’s difficult issues to be worked though. It also helps if something is well written, said Lily, “beautiful prose asks for forgiveness”.
“Bound into any creative project is uncertainty,” she said. Questioning ourselves is part of the mentality of why we write - we write in order to find out what we want to write. Luckily we don’t need to have all the answers. “At the centre of all good literature lies an unanswerable question.” Uncertainty, she said, can be in service to us - our questions can be more important than having the answers. At a process level keep a diary or journal, record dreams, ideas, memories, any nuggets that excite you. Train yourself to recognise the associations to feed your writing. The more you write the more you’ll see connections and natural patterns emerging.
In that spirit here’s Lily’s exercise: 9 minutes of automatic writing (free writing, non-stop without self criticism). Set a timer for 3 minutes for each of the following prompts.
1.Write about your first bedroom that you remember.
2. Write about the first journey you remember.
3. Write about the first day of school you remember.
Note: it’s not the first day you ever went to school or the first journey you ever took etc, it’s the first memories you recall associated with each prompt. We all remember in different ways (in images or emotions, for example) - see what comes up and remember not to stop between each to think or critique.
Our next event online is on Monday 27th February at 7pm and celebrates the brilliance of the short story. I’ll be joined by publisher Tom Conaghan of Scratch Books. Scratch is a new publishing house dedicated to the craft of short stories and have championed stories by the likes of Sarah Hall, Jon McGregor, Irenosen Okojie, Ben Okri, Yiyun Li and Tessa Hadley amongst others. We’ll be exploring what makes a story brilliant, from openings to endings to inspiration and craft as well as the eco system and getting published. Click here to book our Writing Short Stories Zalon.
Workshop news! This spring I’m joining forces once more with book doctor Andrew Wille who’ll be leading two new Four Elements creative writing workshops at the beautiful Phoenix Gardens in Central London: Saturday 11 March - Nature Matters: Writing in Nature, Nature in Writing and Saturday 20th May - Fragrance Matters: Scent, Perfume and Writing. Places are limited - Click here for more details and to book your place.
Hope you can join us at a zalon or workshop soon!
Thanks for reading
Kellie
Links and Refs:
The Guardian: Sins of My Father buy Lit Dunn review - servicing a cult
Creative Non Fiction Magazine - Lee Gutkind
Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self by Alice Walker