Memories of the Future

Letters of an examined life – letter #11

Apr 10, 2024

Writing is about connection. It is about finding those commonalities through shared experience. So when Dr Lily Dunn and I discovered each other’s work we both thought: ‘now this is a woman I could sit down and chat with for hours over a bottle of wine’. Yet geography – the miles between us – made that impossible. So instead we committed to writing letters to one another, to discuss life, memoir, writing craft and more. And in this series, Memories of the Future: letters of an examined life, we have shared those unedited – and often very personal – letters with you, our readers.

For new subscribers, a catch-up, we started this letter-writing series in January and ran for four weeks, eight letters passing between us on a range of topics from motherhood to memoir and the ethics of writing about our personal lives, and how that is both felt by us and received by others. Here we return for another short series.

You can find Lily’s letter #10 to me here.

And a Dog

Memories of the Future

Writing is about connection. It is about finding those commonalities through shared experience. So when Anna Wharton and I discovered each other’s work we both thought: ‘now this is a woman I could sit down and chat with for hours over a bottle of wine’. Yet geography – the miles between us – made that impossible. So instead we committed to writing letters to one a…

9 months ago · 8 likes · 3 comments · Dr Lily Dunn

And here is my reply in letter #11…

Dear Lily,

Thank you for your reply to my last letter, and for finding time to write when you were busy in your self-imposed isolation. I’m pleased to hear that the time you had away was useful and that you managed to work your way through your edit. I too have a novel that is awaiting major surgery – the one that I described to you in my last letter – I just haven’t had time to get to it to carry out the necessary procedure.

I think I told you in my last letter that it is a novel set in Turkey, a place where I lived in my twenties. There are two timelines, one modern day and one set in 1960. I have never written historical fiction before, and it amuses me that something set in 1960 could be described like that. Perhaps vintage, or retro might be better.

It is the modern day timeline that needs the surgery I describe, which is interesting as when I started writing that is the part that came to me so fully formed. It is based on me and my experiences, it actually came into life as a piece of non-fiction writing that went on submission a few years ago and had two major publishers readying themselves to make offers on it. That would have been my first memoir in my own name, and then they both got nervous about it, or rather their lawyers did, and so it was my editor at Bloomsbury who suggested I turn my life into a work of fiction.

But it is still not working – this life of mine in fiction. Strange that, isn’t it? Kind of ironic, as if I am aware of the lie between me and the page. It feels wrong, disingenuous somehow to me, and perhaps my lack of commitment shows in the writing, as these things tend to. And yet I know plenty of people – women, mostly – who are turning their own lives into novels to make them what? More palatable? More private? Less open to defamation claims? It doesn’t feel right to me, and perhaps it is this that is getting in the way, the knowledge that there is some truth in my fiction, although, there is truth in all fiction of course, as you mentioned with regards to your own novel.

I loved the Patricia Hampi quote that you included in your letter: ‘The heart, the guardian of intuition with its secret often fearful intentions, is the boss, its commands are what a writer obeys – often without knowing it.’

You asked me what I thought about this quote, and it seems to me that it summarises what I am describing to you – my heart isn’t in this fictional version of myself because it feels like I am lying when I am usually very comfortable with being open about my life, or at least my ‘guardian of intuition’ is sending me this message. So what to do? What is it commanding me to do? It seems to me that I need to draw a line between fiction and non-fiction, and that modern day timeline belongs in the latter. Perhaps I will come back to it in some incarnation, because that’s the thing about fiction, nothing is ever wasted, even those novels that we have hidden deep in the back of drawers, or those ones on a list awaiting major surgery, or manuscripts that we’ve put in the freezer.

I used to panic that all writing had to matter, that it needed to be for something, otherwise it was all pointless. Perhaps it is because I have written paid words my entire life. Since I was 18, all my words have been in exchange for money because I have always been a writer, I have never been anything else and that is how I have paid my bills. But I know this manuscript of yours that you have been working on recently has been sitting somewhere in your own home, tucked away in a drawer or a computer file.

How does it feel going back to it after this period of dormancy? What have you learnt? I would be intrigued to know.

And talking of dormancy, this summer I will return to Bodrum, where I lived in Turkey, on a holiday with my daughter and some friends, though while I’m there I will visit the Museum of Underwater Archaeology to complete my research. I have not been to Bodrum since my daughter was two and even then I didn’t go to the town itself, just the peninsula. I’m afraid to return to the place where I lived because I know so much has changed and I’ll want it to be exactly as I left it. My friend found a hotel there for us to stay, but it was one once owned by a Turkish friend of mine and it was a place where I would fall asleep on the sunbeds at 4am, parking up my pink bike if it was too late (or unsafe) to bike home alone after a night out with friends. I would wake up with the mosquitoes and cycle home as people were pulling back shutters and sweeping the dust from the road as they set out tables in restaurants for breakfast. I didn’t want to stay at that hotel this year because I knew I would be comparing it then, and now, or perhaps rather comparing myself, but now I am more than twenty years older, and I know it is necessary to let go of the past.

And yet we haven’t let go of our novels, and I hope for good reason. That novel of mine went out on submission two years ago, I remember my agent calling me one day as I walked home, traffic whizzing by, I couldn’t hear him properly and I said: ‘Sorry, did you just say that Virago are reading and loving my novel?’

He did, though nothing came of that, perhaps because of this modern day timeline that is not working and hence the surgery that awaits it. I know you are feeling apprehensive about the submission process that you are about to enter into, as we all do, and I have been through it many times before, both for fiction and non-fiction.

I wonder how it compares to you, the submission process for fiction and non-fiction? Many people don’t realise that there is perhaps more at stake when going on submission with a novel because you must have the entire thing written, whereas for non-fiction, you only have to write a proposal and a sample chapter. That made it feel a more vulnerable process for me. Do you agree?

I’m only ever writing non-fiction to buy myself more time to write fiction, and so it always feels that there is more riding on it, this realisation of an ambition, of an identity perhaps – I have had a novel published, but I still find it hard to describe myself as a novelist. I wonder what your thoughts are on that, or indeed on anything of what I have written here. As always, I would love to know.

Sending all love and solidarity with the next steps in this process.

Your penpal,

Anna

White Ink with Anna Wharton

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