Reflect | February
February writing goals | first draft feelings | unpacking my grief box | the unexpected catharsis of writing a birth story
This is the second instalment of my monthly Reflect posts: process notes from the trenches of writing a first draft of my memoir, a check in with my writing goals for the month that’s ending, and my pondering on any interesting thoughts or findings emerging from what I’ve working on.
My writing goals for February were:
to write 10,000 words
to finish writing the first chapter of my memoir - which covers events from September 2014 and April 2016 segments - and work out how to weave these two timelines together
keep mapping out possible structures for my memoir
Write 10,000 words
As of 25th February, I’ve written almost 14,000 words this month, although only around 8,000 of them have been directly for my larger memoir project. The other 6,000 words have been written for my February Compost post, a draft piece on all the houses I have lived in that I’m planning to post soon, and an application to a writing fellowship (!).
I flip-flop between whether to count all the words I’ve written this month against my target word count, or just those written for the memoir project. I’m leaning towards the first option - because all writing counts. And also because for me the word count goals I’ve set myself are essentially strength training: building a regular writing habit and developing my skills (muscles?) in word craft. Maybe I’ll be close to having written 10,000 words by the end of the month - although February is a short month and it’s also half term week here so I’m finding less slivers of time to write in.
Finish writing a first draft of chapter 1
I’ve nearly achieved this goal, and I’m cautiously optimistic that I will have done so by the end of month. I’ve completed the first draft of the September October 2014 strand and I’m three quarters of the way through the April 2016 strand. I’ve grappled with the creative writing element of memoir this month, because technically some of the events I’ve written about in the October 2014 strand took place in late September 2014. This feels slightly dishonest somehow, but I’m leaning heavily on words of wisdom from
I also planned to think about how to weave these two strands together to form a cohesive chapter. I’ve not really done this, which I feel ok about. This month has been focussed on doing the thing, getting the words out of me and onto the (virtual) page to create a first draft. The more reflective exercise of reading and editing and weaving together can come later. I have started to notice some common themes emerging in the two time periods I’ve been writing about this month: waiting, stone, waves, hospitals. So this should give me a starting point when I reach the editing stage.
Keep mapping out structure
See above - having properly plunged into writing my memoir this month, I think I want to focus on getting a first draft done. This will probably keep me busy until the end of 2025 - at least! Of course, I’ll inevitably keep puzzling away at structure this year - I need to decide what events I’m going to focus on in each timeline for each chapter. To do this, I’ll need to think about how the chapters might fit and flow together, and whether any common themes are emerging.
I’ve been participating in
Proposal Course this month, mostly as an observer, and it’s been excellent. Lots of really valuable advice and guidance from someone who knows the subject inside out. Although it has made me realise how far I currently am from being ready to put a proposal together - but that’s ok. I’m finding it really useful to think about my memoir in this way - about how to sell it to potential agents and publishers - alongside being deep into writing the first draft. I’ve had several epiphany moments so far about my structure and themes that I don’t think I’d have had otherwise. It’s like stretching a different writing muscle.
Some thoughts on unpacking grief
Thinking about and writing about the year and a half around Mum’s death is unsurprisingly bringing up a lot of feelings and thoughts. Ones that I haven’t brought out to examine in daylight for a number of years. It feels good and right to be doing so in the months leading up to the 10th anniversary of her death, but I’m also worried (just as I was then) about the impact on the rest of my life of letting myself really inhabit all these thoughts and feelings. What if I can’t meet all my responsibilities - as a parent, a partner, an employee - because I’ve let myself be consumed with grief? It almost feels indulgent to be opening myself up to grief now - it’s been 10 years, shouldn’t I be more over it than I am?
But I know that this question isn’t a useful one - because grief isn’t something that we get over. It doesn’t have an expiry date. It changes and evolves, and maybe gets easier to carry as the years pass - but there will always be those moments when you’re suddenly poleaxed by grief, just as fresh and painful as it was when they first died. I also know that I have a tendency to box complicated and messy feelings away - when there’s no easy solution to be found that will improve a situation, I’ll pack my emotions neatly away and just keep going. Life doesn’t stop - didn’t stop - just because my mum died. My son still needed meals and baths and bedtime stories. I still needed to go to work, to pay the mortgage, to buy groceries at the supermarket.
I worry that I ran away from Mum’s death, metaphorically at least. I threw myself into motherhood for much of the last 10 years, and it was easy and arguably necessary to do so. Caring for babies and small children is all-consuming, and parents - particularly mothers - inevitably end up putting some of their needs and wants below those of their children. I found out I was pregnant in the immediate aftermath of Mum’s funeral and quickly became hyper focused on the way in which my mental and physical health could affect the baby-to-be. I was convinced that allowing myself to collapse into grief would damage the embryo’s developing brain and nervous system. I consciously allocated an hour or so each day when I would let myself actively grieve, and put a lot of energy into packing all my feelings neatly away the rest of the time. I was - unsurprisingly - not always successful.
I’m so used to packing my grief away that it feels very hard to stop doing it. When I’m writing, I feel like I’m opening up the box and taking out memories and emotions to examine them. But at the same time I’m constantly fighting an urge to pack them away again and slam the lid closed. I’m trying to leave the memories and emotions out in the open, displayed on a metaphorical window sill that I can walk past every day and become familiar with them.
I never thought I’d write a birth story but…
To end on a lighter note, an unexpected joy of this month has been how cathartic it has been to write about my children’s births. I’ve never written a birth story for either of them, although I have detailed bullet pointed notes of how each labour progressed that I wrote in the first few weeks of their lives, knowing that the details would blur with time. It felt really good to take these notes and craft them into narratives - perhaps especially for my first labour, which ended with an emergency c-section and about which I used to feel a lot of guilt and shame for having somehow ‘failed’. The highlight of writing these accounts of labour and birth though was getting to describe the sensation of the baby’s head crowning as feeling like the largest shit I have ever done - which feels both deeply true and a little bit sacrilegious!
I love everything in this post, Ellen (of course!) and really look forward to these updates of how the month has been and where it’s taken you. Really special to read the considered and thoughtful analysis of your own writing, your creative process, grief, and mothering - thanks for sharing with us x
This is such a gently thoughtful and thought provoking piece Ellen. It sounds like you’ve found a way of working that really suits you and the process you’re moving through with your memoir. I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot since we started Memoir in a Month, and realising how differently I’ve grieved each of my parents, and how my grief for my dad is like a process of retrieving parts of myself that I’d suppressed.