Thursday, March 05, 2009

Some challenges posited by my memoir writing.

my computer is well on it's way to being fixed, and my memoir is on it's way to being written. That's not to say I have near enough material as of yet, but on the plus side, I'm up to about 10,000 words and I haven't yet gotten to the meat. Actually that may be the minus side. I haven't actually figured that out.

The problem with this writing I've been doing is that my life is confusing. Trying to structure it so that people could make sense of my ups downs and various influences is a nigh arduous task. Timeline doesn't properly organise my life, and normal memoir structure doesn't either. I don't want my readers to be as confused as I was once they get to the bit about madness.

That's where the issue is, in portrayal of moods and all of that I can't rely on time, or on history. I seem to be doing that a lot, working on things for which I've no forebarers. It's a hard thing to do.

Of course there are many memoirs to look at, and read and reference, but somehow I feel like my memory of events is unsusual. I explained to someone earlier this week how I remember things so well; I tie everything together. If I'm learning about one topic I tie it to another, and another and so on until everything is a jumble of connections.

I have connections, not timelines. I have to go back and use details to sort out the actual timeline of my life. I think that my dad's first break that I was aware of was after my brother's death, but that's only because I'm assuming a partially causal relationship, not because I have any real feeling about which occured first. I could always figure out which years these things happened in through memory and through asking people, but I don't really think that would clear the air.

I want to explain things in an order that makes more sense. That's why this memoir is going to be an interesting experiment. I don't know if I'll ever end up releasing it, but I do know that there's quite a lot of stuff that interacts. It's not stream of consciousness, but it is structured based on sense rather than time.

Most people understand time, but for me, with my ups and downs, and dilation and contraction, time isn't the best way of ordering things. I don't experience time in the same way, and I don't know quite how to reconcile this experience with others.

So be it.

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