Telling your story

Me and my sister on an anthill in Zim.

When I started to write a novel about a young white girl growing up in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, I decided early on that I did not want to write my own story – at least, not directly. I would plunder my story shamelessly, of course, sifting through the endless I-got-up-and-brushed-my-teeth-and-then-and-thens to find the gobbets of (hopefully) gold, but I would not write the actual, literal happenings of my life.

Was this a way of sidestepping some of the messier, more complicated aspects of ‘real’ life? Or a way of making a story less specific and more universal? It’s tricky.

My husband and I were married by the same priest who married my mother to my father, just months before my father was killed in a car accident (a drunk driver hit him. Don’t drink and drive. Seriously). When I told the priest, a family friend, that I was writing a book about Zimbabwe, he looked concerned.
“Don’t talk about your family,” he said. “Really. Leave that well alone.”
I’m still not sure exactly what he meant by this. Yes, I suppose some of my family history is fairly skeleton-in-closet-ish, but then, whose isn’t? I read through what I had written so far. There was nothing here that would expose anyone inappropriately, I thought. I started to worry. Should I cut this scene? Was it too close to the bone? Would such-and-such a relative see themselves in this character, despite the fact that I wasn’t thinking of them at all? Would I ‘get into trouble’?

And then I realised where these fears came from.

As writers, everything is material. Things we learn by accident or design; family secrets we unearth; the dark places where our own, less-than-noble thoughts and wishes lurk. I think that we are often made to feel guilty for seeing these things clearly, and for bringing them out of their hiding places. We become afraid to be clear-eyed and honest about our insights – our insights into ourselves, as well as into other people.

I am not saying that we should sacrifice family and friends for the sake of a story, but we have the right to be honest. Our stories are our stories. We own them. Through owning them, and using them, we give them their meaning. And often, ‘using’ them doesn’t mean writing down our experiences word-for-word.

In writing The Cry of the Go-Away Bird, I tried to be as honest as I could. Zimbabwe is a touchy and very complex subject. But, as I continued to write the book, it became less and less about my experience and ‘that’s just how it happened,’ and more about Elise’s story and the logic that operated within her world. And, as it moved further away from real events and true happenings, the story became (for me) more real and more true. Funny, that.

There comes a point where you have to let your story go. It has to become an object in its own right – no longer ‘yours.’ For my purposes, it made sense to take my life and memories, melt them down, and make them into something different. Even if I had written an actual autobiography, it would end the same way; as an entity independent of me, something that has to make its own way in the world.

This was my decision. Whichever method you choose – good luck. There is no right or wrong way to write about your life and to tell your story, but it is important that you tell it. And don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.