Fran Macilvey's Blog, page 10

The dangers of writing memoir

The dangers of writing memoir

This is a new series about the challenges that attend anyone writing memoir. In this series I will be attempting to address and soothe the largely fictional fears that stop us from writing what we want to about our lives and what has happened to us in the course of them, and more pertinently, what we may have learned through the process of growing older that has benefited us, and may, perhaps, benefit others.

Many writers seem very concerned about the risks...

Why do we write memoir?

Why do we write memoir?

When people ask me why I wrote my memoir, I can offer many excellent reasons, though it’s never easy to summarise forty years of growing up in a pithy, two-sentence reply.

Though for each of us there will be a differing admixture and flavour, a different weight given to recurring themes, nevertheless the reasons people write memoirs are fairly universal.

We write memoir for many reasons.

~ To share interesting stories and leave a legacy of information for our...

Books are learning tools

Books are learning tools. 

Writers know how important reading is, even if we go through periods when reading is not a big part of our lives. Books are learning tools not just for kids and teens, but for adults who write or who aspire to write, as well.

I may dislike the content of a writer’s work – I can’t read Jack Reacher books any more simply because they are too violent for me – but I do learn a lot from an author’s style of writing about how to create tension, how to keep the text mi...

To leave this writing jaunt behind

To leave this writing jaunt behind

One morning recently, before I rose for the day, I said aloud, “I really want to leave this writing jaunt behind now. It’s been twelve hard years and I’ve had enough….”

Sincerely putting the matter out in the open and wondering what would happen, I waited, explaining, “It’s been good, but I’ve had to work so hard, and I don’t think I can weather any more disappointments. I feel beleaguered.”

And I swear that at the back, someone was smiling as they answ...

When I Let Go

When I let go

When I let go of all the needs, wants, plans and expectations, one thing remains still to be acknowledged and resolved. In all this “working for myself” gig, there has been – there is – one obsession that pushes at me, and that at the same time almost guarantees that I shall be either feel unhappy or as if I have failed.

It is the feeling – the belief – that there is something that I should or could be doing that I am not doing. Some path that I have not walked, some obvious an...

Letting dreams go

Letting dreams go

For years now – well over a decade – I’ve had a dream of how I thought my dreams would turn out. Too personal to articulate clearly, I’ve seen in these dreams my varying paths to “success”, “happiness” and all the other achievements we want for ourselves. Who among us does not see that in our dreams?

But instead of a light, colourful anticipation, my wishes have hardened into something akin to an obsession. Instead of loving these dreams into existence, a compulsion has me...

Living more actively

Living more actively

Did you ever feel like the class buffoon, because you said the things or asked the questions that everyone else was thinking? I did, and ended up feeling singled out, not always because of my obvious impairments. Kids are surprisingly perceptive, and often saw me as I was, rather than how I thought I looked.

I did, and do, have unusual priorities, many of which are still being shaped today by “older” expectations: to be good, be no bother, be easy to get along with, be amenabl...

I can do many things

I can do many things.

I can do many things. I can drive a car, I can prepare meals – I’m what might be called a good plain cook – I can sing. Glancing through the remains of what might have once passed as a body of work, it dawns on me that I also produce visual art, some of which has, surprisingly, stood the test of time, despite the absence of any formal recognition or schooling. The test being, after twenty or thirty years, do I still like this? And yes, to a surprising number of things I draw,...

A World of Difference

A World of Difference         

Or perhaps that should read, “A Word of Difference”.

There is, as I discover after many years of trial and error and trial, a world of difference between someone who says, “You write well, but…” and another who says, “I love this, really, I love what you’ve done here. But it needs work”.

Finding the soul who says enthusiastically, “I see where you are going, had you thought of ….?” becomes a positive, partnership-type of hope compared with, say, someone who...

A Sea of Silence

A Sea of Silence

I’ve been busy with submissions lately, and shall be taking a break, now, until I come back from Germany. That’s to say, I will be working, but not with a view to meeting deadlines, submitting or fretting about competitions, articles and the like.

The next couple of months are set to be fairly busy, so it will be useful, after all, to keep a little space in reserve, both to help with the unexpected – things do have a habit of keeping happening – and to allow me a bit of a...