On autofiction.

Miracle Maddie

It’s been a good week for Maddie Girl. She did well at her chiropractor appointment and handled the disruption of moving like a champ. Missy and the family moved to a larger home in the same neighborhood. I’m so excited to visit for Christmas, especially since learning I have loads of time off. I think I’m done with classes around November 26th, and my program doesn’t have exams, so I could realistically be in New Jersey by early December and travel to Florida shortly thereafter. I can’t wait to see Maddie and hold her and tell her how much I love her. I want to tell her how proud I am of how hard she’s fighting and I want to confess that I talk about her all the time because I think about her constantly.

Ireland

I really do love it here in Limerick. I didn’t do much exploring this past week, but this upcoming weekend, I’m taking a tour of the Ring of Kerry. My housemate Alison is from the area and assures me that it’s beautiful. I’m looking forward to it, especially since I missed the trip to Dingle Peninsula which Guillaume raved about.

WritingAutofiction

This week, I attended the first of three autobiographical writing seminars by the author Rob Doyle. I wasn’t too invested at first because I do very little autobiographical writing, or at least I thought I did. Rob pointed out how social media has made nearly everyone more prone to autobiographical writing. Think about the captions on Instagram posts, or even some of the posts themselves, which are intimate confessions of loneliness or heartbreak against the backdrop of a rainy window or some equally aesthetically pleasing background. Hell, this blog is autobiographical writing. So is my journal. Once Rob explained that autobiographical writing includes memoir and confessional writing and personal essays, and more, I started to become more interested.

We read an excerpt from Edouard Levé’s Autoportrait. The book is essentially one long paragraph where the author makes typically short, declarative statements about his likes and dislikes, about what he has done and what he would like to do, and his ideas and feelings. On Amazon, one reviewer brilliantly describes it as “This is a self-portrait written as a series of self-observations, each a pixel, some apparently slight details, some more clearly significant. It builds and builds in its effect until you feel the character coming to life in your hands.” And that was the task Rob set before us: to mimic the style of Levé and write our own autoportraits. It was quite the experience.

We also talked about autofiction, which I am becoming more and more interested in. Autofiction is the blending of autobiographical writing and fiction. To further explain this concept and make it more accessible, Rob pointed us in the direction of Mark Fisher. He also encouraged us to think of something we’d read that critiqued or discussed some form of art through a narrative sort of stance. I immediately thought of one of my favorite articles about Joy Division. Rob encouraged us to try writing about a piece of art–any kind of art: high brow, low brow, pop culture–in a narrative way because the piece of art had to have affected us deeply.

I tried writing about My Chemical Romance and I think there’s something there, but it needs more structure. There needs to be a bit more planning, but then I think I could have a pretty good personal essay.

Working as a Writer

I also am working on the fourth round of edits for Moody Blue, scheduled to be released this coming summer.

I also need to work on my piece for workshop. I have about a week before I need to resubmit.

I’m living my best writing life, for sure.