My writing ‘journey’ has taken many twists and turns (I sound like one of those hopefuls on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ with their annoying journeys), but I do feel it’s been like one of those particularly arduous journeys when the children say, Are we there yet? only five minutes in; you breakdown in the worst possible place and then get horribly lost in some never-ending nightmarish set of roundabouts.
When I did that MA in Creative Writing back in 2012, I just thought it would give me something to do and think about for a year; it’d fill my time and and exercise my mind. I had a vague idea about a story set in Cyprus, but no particular vision for the future and certainly no great ambitions.
If I’d told myself then that I would go on to write eight books and be planning two more, I think I would have been intimidated; I couldn’t think past the terrifying prospect of people actually reading my work, at that stage.
Why I took it upon myself to write a memoir, I’m not sure. I’d thoroughly enjoyed writing fiction but one of the most difficult parts of the process, for me, was coming up with a plot. Once I’d got that organised in my head, I found the actual writing, easy; it poured out through my fingers with a certain alacrity. So, to write a memoir was taking away the hard part - the ‘plot’ was already mapped out for me, as in ‘my life’; I just had to write it, didn’t I?
But, in fact, it’s not as easy as it sounds, to write about your life. Where do you start? What do you put in? What do you leave out? How do you organise it? What will be the tone? The questions go on and on and in the end, it turns out to be just as difficult as coming up with a plot.
I decided to write about our marriage as a starting point – let’s face it, it’s been the biggest part of my life: from 17 to 71 – actually, maybe that could have been a good title? There’s a certain symmetry there. But I thought of the title, ‘Love, Honour and Annoy’ and thought it was brilliant. (Not blowing my own trumpet or anything) – but I was convinced someone else would have used it, so immediately started checking on Amazon and elsewhere. I was excited to find no one else was using it as a title. It was perfect for what I had in mind: a humorous take on our marriage. It’s taken me a long time to realise that the title is so important for Amazon’s algorithms; it needs to give some indication of the genre and tone, which this does perfectly. The first book I wrote, ‘Aphrodite’s Child’ confused both Amazon and readers, as it was often put into categories about Greek Gods. I now have to feed the Amazon algorithm with negative keywords to get it to move away from Greek mythology and point readers towards romance and contemporary women’s fiction with the sub-genre of Greek island escape. I still like it as a title, but if I had my time again, I wouldn’t use it. I could I suppose, re-publish the story under a different title, but then I’d lose all my reviews and traction I’ve got so far.
I’ve always wanted to write something funny; I have little snippets of writing that I wrote years ago that were all comic in tone; one in particular was an ironic critique of a film which I can look at objectively as it was written so long ago; it’s like it was written by someone else – and I still think it’s pretty funny.
When I started ‘Aphrodite’s Child’ it was going to be a funny story about a woman being thrown into this strange world of an RAF camp, but it changed while I was doing my MA; we used to have sessions when the students would read each other’s work and comment either in writing, or in person. I found that my ironic, rather sarcastic humour didn’t resonate, so I changed it and it became what it is today – a typical women’s fiction love story. I’m glad I changed it, as I don’t think the other two books in the trilogy would have followed.
But that hankering to write something funny remained. I read ‘This is Going to Hurt’ by Adam Kay and wished I could write something like that. His unique writing style inspired me; he was able to combine comedy and tragedy so beautifully. I’m not saying my book, in any way, is on a par with his, but he definitely showed me the way, to write about your life in the form of a memoir, not just as a straightforward autobiography.
So, one day, I just started writing and I found I could ‘see the funny side’ of my life quite easily. I had a desire to get my life down on paper, to make it feel meaningful. Let’s face it, when you’re in your seventies, you begin to question what your life has all been about and the conclusion I was coming to, was that I had no effing idea; somehow, the older you get, the more meaningless everything seems.
It’s a cliché to say that life is short, but bloody hell, the past thirty years have gone so quickly. Thirty years ago, I was living that dream life in Cyprus, blond, brown and 41. I thought I was fat but when I look at myself now in those faded pictures, I was thin … and young. My oldest daughter is now the age I was then; the years in-between have just gone by like a film on fast forward. What the hell have I been doing with my life?
Well, by writing the memoir, I realised I’ve been trying to work out who the hell I am.
Was I a secondary school teacher? (Definitely not). Was I photographer? Well, yes … for many years. Was I a financial advisor? Categorically, NO WAY. Was I an English as a foreign language teacher? Yes, but it drained the life out of me. Was I (just) a wife who trailed after her husband to different RAF camps? Yes. Was I (just) a mother of three wonderful children? Yes, but they truly are my greatest achievement.
The answer is, of course, I’ve been all those things … but now I’m just … me. And I still can’t work out who that is. All I do know is that I’ve been married for a lifetime, we annoy each other all the time and that it’s inevitable. How can such different people live together for over fifty years without driving each other insane? But now it’s just me and him rattling around in this house together, getting on each other’s nerves, but surely that’s better than the alternative?
I recommend anyone to write their life down. When you’re gone and when you’re immediate family have gone, no one will give a damn about that fact that you existed at all. You’ll just be a faded gravestone that people walk past and read … if you’re lucky. There lies Sarah Catherine Knights, who lived for a millisecond in the grand scheme of things, who tried hard to make her mark in life and spectacularly failed, except for a little memoir she wrote, that will forever fly digitally around the internet, informing people of her existence.
But then again, maybe in the not too distant future, there will be some form of technology that we haven’t even invented yet, which will make my digital file as redundant as the floppy disc or the CD and I won’t be there to update it.
Oh well, I tried.