ON MEMOIR WRITING, DISAPPOINTING ART, AND OTHER MATTERS

In answer to your questions.

Dear Readers,

At the end of this month, we are going to start paywalling some texts. One week will be free, the next paywalled, and so on. It may not be as unbending as this, we shall see.

So, we are holding a flash sale.

For the next week, yearly subscriptions will be priced at just £25.00.

That’s less than three pounds a month for all my writing.

Your contributions go towards my care, which include physio, massages, hydrotherapy and equipment, all of which is essential for my physical maintenance.

In addition, if you wish to preorder my forthcoming memoir, Shattered, you can do so by following the links provided here:

https://linktr.ee/shatteredH

(Photograph of Natalia Ginzberg)

SUSAN: Do you have an opinion about using structured writing exercises (kind of like piano etudes, I suppose) as one way for a person to try to get started?

HANIF: I want to answer this question by talking about how I wrote my last blog, Nightmares and Kisses. I was thinking about an essay called He and I by Natalia Ginzburg, published in 1962, where she examines a married relationship, using alternate sentences to describe the different attitudes, opinions, likes and dislikes of herself and her then husband. That, at least, is how I remember it, the precious volume being upstairs in my study, where I have no access to it, and haven’t looked at it in years.

Carlo suggested we attempt to write this blog in the third person, something we’d never done before, and that I was keen to try. It’s an attractive way to write a personal essay, and I wondered if it would give me some objectivity.  

Carlo and I began loosely to follow this strategy, but we soon digressed and found we were doing something else, a portrait of my relationship with Isabella from three angles, a triptych.

We began simply; by describing everyday differences between my partner and I, but found the piece had no story or momentum. As we talked this through, which is how we work, Carlo then suggested it might be an idea to describe our relationship by way of three events or scenes.

The first would be set in Italy over the course of a day. The second in the Santa Lucia hospital in Rome after my accident. And the third in London at home, where I am now. So you can see the development; we started out trying to write one thing, and ended up with something different.

Writing tends to take this form, if you are lucky. You must give yourself the freedom to discover what it is you are trying to say.

SARAH: What impact do you think writing your memoir Shattered at the same time as the events happened had on the book that emerged?

TIM: Do you have anything to say about writing about a) sexual encounters, and b) drug experiences?

HANIF: There is a big difference between writing a memoir and writing fiction. At least with a memoir, you are attempting to give a true account of something that actually happened. Usually I write fiction, where you are freer.  However autobiographical it may be, you are not attempting to draw a picture of reality, but to tell a significant story that an audience might enjoy. But when writing Shattered, I was trying to give an account of my everyday experiences after my accident and in hospital. As for the portrayal of real people, I agree that you have to be careful when describing your interactions with them, since your words will remain in print for a long time, and you wouldn’t want to insult anyone. This is not the case in fiction of course.

In writing Shattered, I began it as a diary, a straight account of what was happening to me, hour by hour, day by day, in the hospital. I wrote it as directly as possible; it wasn’t dressed up, exaggerated or smoothed over. I felt that the reader would be drawn in by the rawness and directness of the account.

As the writing of the blogs continued over the next weeks and months, I began to think more about their actual form; some of them were memories of my childhood; pictures of people I knew, worries about the people around me and their responses, etc. So I had to continue to develop the form, keeping the writing immediate, but introducing new techniques to add variety, sustaining the reader’s interest, and of course my own, by doing something different each time. Some of the blogs are impressionistic and loose; others are more organised and anecdotal. The writing has to remain lively, to pop and sing, from line to line, week to week; holding two conflicting ideas together, contrasting images and themes, vacillating between the personal, the sociological and political. 

As for writing about sex and drugs, I would prefer to fictionalise it, since you are freer, but there are many autobiographical accounts which are entertaining as well as truthful. For example, I particularly enjoyed Sebastian Horsley’s Dandy in the Underworld, which is all the more remarkable for the fact that much of it actually happened.

BEG: I'd like to know if there has been a book, film, artwork in general that was so disappointing that it inspired you to write a story

HANIF: Growing up, when we as a family would watch comedies and sitcoms before bed, I felt that the representation of people of colour was often inaccurate, foolish or racist. The stories of recent immigrants to the U.K. from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean, needed to be told more fully, and from the inside. There had to be a more sympathetic and interesting way to think about the new Britain, which was immerging from the end of colonialism and the beginning of what became known as multiculturalism.  This presented new writers with an opportunity, to write characters, lives, and stories which fresh and so far unexplored. 

MIKE: Why are you not a political activist while you have so many by the ear?

I am and have always been engaged in politics. But there journalists and writers who are much better placed to comment on what is going on than I am. Since my accident, I have written about little else.

Still, it is a relief that these disgusting tories and their awful policies have finally been kicked down the road. I felt elated when I woke up, realising they were finally gone. They have attacked our libraries, leisure centres, the arts, as well as our major institutions, like the BBC and NHS. I hope that Kier Starmer’s government will create a freer and more compassionate society; I know he is not particularly radical, but I believe that he will release the energies of other radicals in our society, and that we will move to a more creative and inclusive outlook.

CHRIS: What have you learned about yourself and what has surprised you most?

HANIF: One of the things I have learned about myself since my accident is how resourceful I turned out to be.

Two things happened; the first is that I have new subject matter, the accident and its aftermath, which has affected every facet of my life, including the lives of those around me. The second is that now, because of how little I can actually do for myself – the basic tasks of my life are taken care of by others – I have a lot of free time. Just this morning, I am being shaved, my urine bag is being emptied, and lunch prepared, while I sit and dictate these words.