The Useful Art of Forgetfulness: N M Browne
Memory is a strange thing. I have a special gift for
forgetting - names mainly - I long ago mastered the art of the no
introduction introduction, but it seems I have achieved a similar level of
advanced forgetfulness about my own writing. Long ago, when I was good at exams
I trained myself to forget the paper once It was done, as a kind of protective
mechanism so I didn’t worry about my mistakes. Useful though that may have been
to my teenage self’s mental health, it set an unfortunate precedent and I
forget whatever I’ve written pretty much as soon as I’ve done it. I don’t
remember the names of characters and I literally lose the plot.
I find this
irritating especially for those books which I researched. It’s like my mind is sand – washed clean at the end of every project. I must have seemed an air head when I was young
and now I give an excellent impression of a half demented old bat. There is an
upside, however. I recently reread a couple of old books of mine and thoroughly
enjoyed them, not least because I did not remember what was coming next.
I know that you are
supposed to be more critical of old work. I think you are supposed to be clinical,
professional, point out all the things that could have been better done. I feel
no such obligation as, predictably, although I vaguely remember writing the
books and indeed how I felt about the process, I retain almost nothing of the
details. They could have been written by someone else, albeit a someone else
who knew how to tell a story ideally suited to please me. I don’t think that
someone was a bad writer either. I’d definitely read more of her work.
Now and again I
came across a passage I have often read aloud for a school visit or something
and that briefly jarred me from childlike immersion in my own story, but for
the most part, I was lost in my own imagination.
I mention this for
two reasons. The first is obvious, a small part of me feels it would be good to
promote myself and point out that these old books are still worth reading. The
second is that If anyone had asked, I would have said
that I am very much the same writer I’ve always been. I’m not sure that’s true.
Those stories came from a particular point in my life, a certain stage in my
mothering, a particular political moment. It’s not that I would want to write
them differently because I’d want to write them better, more that if I were to
write them now they would become different stories because I’m different. It
will be interesting to see if that’s how I remember them in future.
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