Living with Isla and the Part stories

Isla Goodchild has been with me since early-2011 when I joined the Beeston WEA writing class, then led by Mike Wareham. He was a good tutor. I joined the class because I was looking for ideas as to how I might write a memoir. The local historian in me was already well aware of reminiscence writing, life story telling and autobiographies, having read hundreds over the twenty odd years Susan, my wife, and I published Local History Magazine. What I hadn't expected Mike to do was divert me, by introducing me to short story writing and its challenges.

Quite early on, Isla Goodchild came into my life. I knew from the off who she was — a amalgam of people and events, men and women, personal, family, work, politics. You name it, she was it. I could see her, hear her, feel her and she has been part of me ever since. Early on Mike asked the class to write in a gender not our own and there was Isla, in my head, waving, 'I'm here, I'm here'.

I love her. I have been writing and parking stories about her ever since. I have probably said before that I am more interested in how words tumble onto the page and how we remember the past, how we prioritise what we write, how easily we are distracted and diverted. Story telling is not a straight line, so why should we expect a life story to be a chronology of dates and events. It is not how we remember things.

Our heads harbour the lives we think we have lead, the ones we wanted to lead or could have had, and when we speak of them those we love and others are there waiting to correct us.

When I first met Isla in 2011 she came, it seemed at the time, out of nowhere, prompted by Mike Wareham. I quickly realised she has always been part me and her life is mine and those of others I have connected to, some fleetingly, whilst others will be with me I until the day I die.

Life is a collection of parts and this fact is enough to explain why I have began to post my Part stories. 

Remember as we write?

What comes first, the thought or the word?

It could of course be an image or something we hear. I sometimes hear a story in my head which prompts me to write and as I write the story changes. I have, on occasions, watched my hand write, then read the words. I have had 'out of body' moments for as long as I can remember. Watching myself. And since my mother died in 2006 I have thought myself to be her a few times, not that we were ever close, given that I rarely lived with her.

Published fiction is 'sanitised' fiction insomuch as what the author writes is picked over by the publisher's editor and comes out in a form which may be different in terms of plot and wording. What the author writes and what the reader gets are two different things. Neither should we forget how many times the author re-works his or her text before it is handed to the editor. All writers do it, self-edit.

Should we be afraid of what we write? Perhaps. I am glad that I have come to fiction writing through my interest in local history and life-story telling. I see the me in what I write, the good and bad, what I want the truth to be and what it is. 

Some years ago, a friend's mother was worried that she was showing signs of dementia. After a long chat we came to the conclusion that her mum was a seventy-something with too much unoccupied time and that she needed an interest. The solution turned out to be bread-making, so my friend bought her mum a bread machine. Within a week she had become the family baker and so she remained for next ten years or so. There was always something to talk about, orders to make, recipes to discuss. I was able to help because I introduced my step-father to soup making and bread-making when he was 71 and recovering from a heart attack. Not that he appeared to be in any danger of suffering from dementia  as his mornings were taken up by the Red Cross shop he managed in Eastbourne, then his afternoons were spent in the kitchen, shopping or help my sister in Hastings look after her garden. My mother watched and read. Both made it into their mid-eighties without any hint of dementia.

My friend's mum finally succumbed to dementia and my friend said to me "I can tell you the moment I knew the worst and what made it worse was that Mum knew too". It was when she forgot something and no longer knew that she forgot things. It seems as good a description of dementia as any others I have heard or read.

You may wonder what all this has to do with writing? I believe that how we write is an exercise in how we remember. Nothing comes from nowhere. I begin to write and unlock memories of sorts, but if or when I forget how to write that is when I will be locked in my head, unable to communicate.

We articulate our thoughts with words, except when we cry or scream or act in some physical way. Even then we will return to words.

Perhaps all published fiction should be accompanied by an online copy of the author's original text. We may find we prefer the un-sanitised version, but then what would editors and publishers do to re-order the world?