Reflect | November
My writing life this month: compost and community, applications and overwhelm, old photographs and folktales
Part 11 of my monthly Reflect posts: a check in with my writing goals for the month that’s ending, where I’m at with the memoir project I’m hoping to complete a first draft of by the end of the year, and any interesting ideas emerging from what I’ve been writing about.
Regular readers might notice that there’s nothing related to my big memoir project (TM) in my writing goals for this month. This is directly linked to my realisation in October’s Reflect post that I am not going to have a finished first draft of my memoir by the end of 2025. So I’ve taken a step back from this project this month to give myself a little time and space to get some perspective on it. After several months of sustained focus on increasing my word count I was beginning to feel like I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
So far, this short break seems to be working. I feel like I’ve got a sense of the memoir project as a whole again and ideas are bubbling up for sections I haven’t written yet, narrative strands I could weave into the structure, or different ways I could frame a scene - helped in no small part by the excellent courses I’m currently taking part in from Dr Lily Dunn and Lindsay Johnstone and the writing groups that are forming around these.
November continues to be a composting month. I wrote about this in my last post - on the surface it looks like there’s very little going on, but beneath the soil I can feel all sorts of ideas starting to put out roots and connections starting to form. I am very much trying to trust the process and let things take the time they need, rather than attempting to force them to put out leaves and bloom before they’re ready to. This does not come naturally to me.
I should also caveat that it’s only on the writing side that November has been a composting month. In other areas of my life - the day job, parenting, family stuff - this month has been a pretty busy and overwhelming one. And December, of course, is set to be more of the same (hello last minute present buying and the logistics of travelling at midwinter).
I’ve also been struggling to adjust to the dark mornings. My regular writing time is 6-7am before the rest of the house is awake, but now it’s pitch black at 6am, cold and dark. My soft animal body wants to burrow down under the covers and hibernate, not venture downstairs to a cold writing desk. My writing window has shrunk to about 20 minutes, with at least 40 minutes required for me to get up, make myself a mug of tea, and feel awake enough to write. I have now sourced a SAD light, which I’m going to blast directly at my face at 6am tomorrow and see if it helps me get into the zone more quickly.
Continuing Lily Dunn’s Creative Nonfiction: Compelling Memoir course
I am SO glad that I signed up for this course. It has been exactly what I needed in terms of stepping back from my intense focus on trying to write a first draft and considering memoir more broadly: different techniques, framing devices, the craft of it. I have realised that a lot of my first draft is telling rather than showing, and that I don’t have to write about everything that happened during the 18 month period covered in the main narrative of my memoir. I can be selective: choose the scenes that are connected to the themes I want to explore, leave gaps in the narrative, link back to earlier events from my childhood - or even my parents’ childhoods - that I want to weave into the story. I want to make more use of the reflective voice - the present day version of me who is doing the writing, who is looking back at a particular moment in my life and examining it in all its tangled layers.
I have also really valued and enjoyed the community elements of the course. It is always so lovely to connect with a group of other writers who are working on similar projects and grappling with similar challenges to me. I feel very grateful for the opportunity to read their writing, and for them to read mine, giving and receiving each other feedback. It’s particularly the fresh perspectives on a story I know upside down and back to front that I find so valuable I think - a useful nudge to think about how to tell this story to a broader readership than just myself.
We have the final assignment left to write, which Lily will provide feedback on, and plans are being developed to continue the writing group in some form after the course has ended. Shout out to those members who I know are on Substack, Jaimie Pattison and Rachel Haywood!
Dive into Lindsay Johnstone’s Writing from the Archives group programme
I am a historian by inclination so I was always going to jump at the chance to sign up a group programme about using archival material in our writing from one of my favourite Substackers. I missed the second monthly session and am planning to catch up on the recording this weekend, but I feel confident in saying that I’m really going to enjoy taking part in this programme and my writing on the big memoir project is going to benefit from it.
Like I talked about earlier, the opportunity to participate in a witting group is such a valuable one, to talk to other people who are also writing from the archives and to consider different ways this can be done. In its earliest incarnation, my current writing project was going to explore the lives of four generations of eldest daughters (from my great-grandmother to myself). It has developed a much tighter focus over the course of this year, and is now centred around the 18 months in which my mum died and I became pregnant and gave birth to my second child - but I’ve realised that I still want to bring some earlier threads into the narrative.
After the first session, I wrote a short piece in response to two photographs of my maternal grandparents taken during their honeymoon in 1944. I’d always been told they went to the Isle of Man for their honeymoon, but some archival research based on information in one of these photographs suggests that it might have been Blackpool instead. I am fascinated by the potential reasons for this misremembering - was it a false memory or an outright lie? - and it’s planted several new seeds that I could draw into my main writing project.
Apply to the Jerwood-Arvon Writer Residencies scheme
Completed! I decided to submit an application for this residency as part of the mini failure challenge I’ve set myself, inspired by a recent post from Sarah Robertson.
I’m trying to overcome the imposter syndrome that often strikes when I think about submitting a piece of my writing to a competition or publication by making a game of it. My aim is to submit to two places a month, and effectively to trick my brain into focussing on completing that goal rather than worrying about whether I’ll win the competition or be picked for publication. So far it seems to be working (November is month 3 of this challenge) and I’ve even had some success (I was long listed for the Wild Muse Nature Prize).
But oh, completing my application to the Jerwood-Arvon Writer Residencies was a slog. I think this was because I realised part way through the process quite how much I wanted to be awarded one of the 15 places up for grabs. It would be an amazing opportunity, enabling me to dedicate significant chunks of time and space to my writing in 2026 and 2027, as well as supporting me to develop my skills. And it feels inevitable that there is very little chance that I will be successful. Trying to put your all into an application when you’re already convinced it will fail is a particular kind of purgatory.
But…I did it. I completed the required writing sample of 5000 words (stitched together from my working first draft of the memoir) and the supporting writer’s statement, and I submitted them by the deadline. Even if I am unsuccessful, putting the application together was a valuable experience as it meant that I needed to reflect on my memoir project as a whole: my motivations for writing it, the themes it will explore, the “so what?” question of why anyone would want to read it. I feel sure that these reflections will stand me in good stead when I return to working on the first draft.
Finish a short essay I’ve been working on about mothers leaving and the fairy women that live in Welsh mountain lakes
In progress. I’m writing this piece in response to a call out for submissions to an upcoming issue of Folding Rock magazine on the theme of Folklore. The deadline for submission is mid-December, which is beginning to feel very soon. Like my application to the Jerwood-Arvon Writer Residencies, this one is beginning to feel like a bit of a slog. Not this time because I’m paralysed by the certainty that I’ll be unsuccessful, but rather by the realisation that this piece might have a wider part to play in my in-progress memoir. It was supposed to be a short parallel project, exploring some of the same themes as I do in the big memoir project from a different angle in essay form. Somehow however, it’s slowly sending out shoots that are twining themselves around several different sections of my memoir like ivy. Coupled with how intensely busy November has been, I’m worried that I won’t be able to do this piece justice in the time I’ve got to write it in. It feels like it could be good, but whether I’ll be happy with what I’m able to write by the deadline is another question. I’m trying to remind myself that the planned submission to Folding Rock and my ongoing memoir project are two separate things. If the piece I submit is unsuccessful, but the process of writing it feeds the wider memoir then that is a success.
Wow, so many inspiring achievements in your writing life amongst your busy “normal” life! Well done Ellen and congratulations on the long listing! And wishing you all the good vibes for the residency 🤞🏽
Your productivity levels are an inspiration!