Nonfiction and Revisitation

First, let's recap: this month, I've received one nonfic acceptance, two fiction rejections, and competed in the London Final for the Rose of Tralee. And I want to talk about discovering my nonfiction voice after nearly ten years of trying.

I've done it. Maybe. I've used my memory to enhance, rather than overwhelm, my writing. And people responded well to it.

For the neuroscientists out there: I have a highly-superior autobiographical memory (HSAM), but that sounds like something a Marvel character would say before their scene partner makes the "well that just happened" face at the camera.

What it really means is it's very, very difficult for me to move on after traumatic experiences or grief; I relive entire days in parallel, recall every moment I was in a specific space, who was wearing what and what was said. I don't remember everything, but I won't delve into the intricacies of my memory here (friends from undergrad especially got an earful). The point is, writing is a great way to indulge in the past, then return me to the present. Once written down, I take comfort in the fact that these memories are archived somewhere, and that almost releases me from the burden of having to carry them, relive them, unpick them until I understand what really happened.

This is actually the crux of my novel (the one I'm querying lit agents about): how memory can become all-consuming, obsessive, especially when everyone has moved on without you.

But that's a work of fiction. Creative Nonfiction can be difficult at times; I'm worried my recollections sound too cerebral, like I'm spilling sequences of events onto the page, because I'm writing as I relive them. Like they're still happening. Like I'm still there, overwhelmed, out of control.

The proof is in the rejections, of which I've received many for my nonfic pieces. The feedback is nonexistent so I can only assume the reader just couldn't connect. I soften my language, divert the trains of thought so that they actually have a destination, try to write memory in a way that makes sense. My introductory course to the genre at Sarah Lawrence (taught by the incomparable Jacob Slichter) helped me sort some of this out, but I needed much more life experience and exposure to different types of writing to understand how to express my memory in a more accessible way.

Yet what use is this adaptation, when memory is so fascinating and underexplored? Shouldn't we want more stories explored through the strange and unique ways people remember them?

The answer is yes, but you need to experiment. And I finally did just that.

The first sign that I was doing something right was at the Oxford Poetry Library's monthly "This is Just to Say" spoken word night. The theme was "planes, trains, and automobiles", and I had just fumbled together a multi-part poem based on an annual vacation I take with my friends. Even though we have our traditions and do roughly the same things, the dynamic slightly changes, particularly between me and another person in the group. So I created a "living" poem that I'll add to every other year, chronicling how things continue to change.

At the spoken word night, I went up towards the end. I knew the crowd's energy was waning, so I decided to not only read the poem, but actually relive the trips we took in 2016, 2018, 2022 and 2024. Love, indignation, despair and cautious reconciliation all swept through me over the course of four minutes, and the audience responded to it all with laughter and "ooos" and nodding.

After the show, a group of regulars (including previous featured poets) asked me about the piece, the writing process, and invited me out for drinks. It was a wonderful night, and I'm not ashamed to admit it: this has never happened to me after a poetry reading. Because I haven't allowed myself to experiment with my memory, turn it into something that doesn't just assail with its precision but can be wielded and reshaped to connect with others.

So the poem went well. But what about prose?

When Taylor Swift released her new album, I waded through the palaver until I found one or two songs I actually liked. They reminded me specifically of my first relationship. At the same time, a call for submissions came out for a literary magazine, and I decided to run another memory experiment: I challenged myself to relive two moments that took place in the same spot—one sweet and romantic, the other devastating—and write about them.

However, I wanted to portray how I recalled them. So, through a malestrom of formatting in Word, I wrote each story in separate columns. This is the crudest way I can show how HSAM works: reliving details in parallel, standing frozen in that spot, wishing for the good, agonizing over the bad, and realizing it's been a decade since either of them happened. It's like when a song transitions to a round, only to end on the same word and fade out. Writing both memories in this way prevented me from fully falling back into the past, but rather allowed me to inhabit it just enough to produce something raw and engaging.

Which is the feedback I received from a literary magazine when they accepted it for their upcoming anthology! There will be more fanfare about that whenever it's published, so stay tuned.

One final note: as present circumstances worsen, and we search for ways to improve them, we often escape through nostalgia. Maybe this time-lapse style of writing is tapping into something once perceived as indulgent. That's mere speculation, of course, so for now, my main takeaway is that I finally feel like I've discovered my nonfiction voice. And I can't wait to use it again.