Anne Skyvington
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Anne Skyvington

The Craft of Writing

  • Writing
    • Craft
      • Structuring a Short Story
      • Alternative Narrative Approaches
      • Genre in Writing
      • A Grain of Folly
        • Novel Writing
          • The Sea Voyage: a metaphor
          • How I Created My Debut Novel
          • What I learnt from writing a novel…
          • Short Story
            • At the Swimming Pool
            • The Night of the Barricades
          • Poetry
            • a funny thing happened …
            • An ancient mystic: Rumi
            • A Window into Poetry
            • The Voice of T.S. Eliot
  • Publishing
    • A Change of Blog Title
    • 5 Further Publishing Facts
    • 5 Facts I Learnt About Self/Publishing
    • Highs and Lows of Self Publishing
    • A Perfect Pitch to a Publisher
    • A Useful Site for Readers and Indie Authors: Books 2 Read
  • Book Reviews
    • A Story of a Special Child
    • Discovering Karrana
    • A Young Adult Novel: My French Barrette
    • Randwick Writers’ Group: Sharing Writing Skills
    • The Trouble With Flying: A Review
  • Mythos
    • Ancient Stories from Childhood
    • Births Deaths and Marriages
    • Duality or Onenness: The Moon
    • The Myth of Persephone and Demeter
    • Pandora’s Box
    • 7 ancient artefacts in the British Museum
    • Symbolism of Twins
    • The Agony and the Ecstasy of Change
    • Voices From the Past
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    • Travel to Croatia
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    • A Love Sonnet by Ian Harry Wells
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    • A Story of a Genteel Ghost told by Roger Britton
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    • Networking and Emotional Intelligence
    • C.G.Jung’s Active Imagination and the Dead
    • Psychology as a Field of Study
    • Western Influencers Down Through The Ages
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    • Adriatic Romance … Rijeka to Titograd
    • Always something there to remind me…
    • A Well-Loved Pet
    • Candidly Yours…
    • Memoir Writing
    • River Girl: An Early Chapter of my Memoir in Progress
Writing

Serendipity at the 2017 Sydney Writers’ Festival

written by Anne Skyvington June 10, 2017
sydney-writers-festival

Way back then, at Armidale Teachers’ College, Liz was reminiscent of one of those Botticelli angels, but without the curls.  She looked a lot like Miranda from Picnic at Hanging Rock.  Able to attract the attentions of the college Adonis at the time, ideal partner for an Aphrodite, she did so without vanity, without affectation. I remember her telling me that her mother had died when she was younger.  My mother was alive, but there were issues. And my immaturity translated itself into a political conversion to Communism during my college years. Could it solve the world problems of inequality, the scurge of warring nations? I even travelled from France to the USSR after Teachers’ College, to try to find out the answer to this.

miranda-in-picnic-at-hanging-rock

Only in recent years, since the College Reunion in 2011, have Liz and I become close friends.  Our common experiences of having lived and worked in France was one of the triggers.

She still has that angelic quality about her, but it is one that incarns wisdom now, rather than mere surface features.

We met in May at the Sydney Writers’ Festival this year. It has grown bigger each year, and the multiple venues are more comfortable and containing than before. Many sessions are free or inexpensive and easily accessible.

robert-dessaix-writer-essayistLiz chose the talk by Robert Dessaix: “On Kissing, Hugging and Saying ‘I Love You'”.  I valued her judgement and went along with it. We were not disappointed.

“An orgy of kissing and hugging has broken out across the Western world”, Dessaix proclaimed in his satirical monologue, “and we have to take a stand”.

He kept us enthralled by his erudite, funny and poetic sentences, with lots of modern references, as well as allusions to Russian writings, such as Alexai Pushkin’s poem, “I Loved You”.

Typical of his ironic stand is when he noted that the liver is the organ to represent romantic love in Java, not the heart.

The high point for me was, while Liz was seeking out a political event, to happen upon a talk by a young American French woman, Nadja Spiegelman. Her talk about her memoir, “I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This”, I wouldn’t have missed for the world!  I bought the book and read it greedily.

nadja-and-her-book copyThe author is the daughter of a French woman and an American father, both well-known writers. The memoir traces four generations of mothers and daughters, from Paris to New York and back again.  It is the story of strong French women who survive the war and battle against the patriarchal values of the times in France. The young author—she is twenty-seven years old—tells an archetypal story that all women could relate to in its universality, about jealousy and pain, often passed on to daughters, who often have to survive or resist their mothers’ stories. Françoise, the mother of the author, survived her background by emigrating to America. This memoir also recognises the truth of the fallibility of memory.

Angels, the kind without wings of course—magical women—inhabit this book. Their stories and voices will remain in the reader’s mind for a long time, given the writer’s artful use of language and her enviable communication skills.

The beginning sentences are marvellous: “When I was a child, I knew that my mother was a fairy. Not the kind of fairy with gauzy wings and a magic wand, but one with a thrift-store fur coat and ink-stained fingers.”

Other gems are: “Pure memories are like dinosaur bones…discrete fragments from which we compose the image of the dinosaur…But memories we tell as stories come alive. And when we look again, our memories are whole, breathing creatures that roam our past.”

Editor’s note: Thanks to Ian Wells for pointing out my incorrect use of the word “infallibility” above.  I meant the opposite. Each mother/daughter in this memoir has a differing perspective on their past relationships and contradictory memories of similar events. I’ve now changed the word to the “fallibility” of memory.

The memoir emerged from Nadja’s  own questions about the conflicting versions of family stories. Who decides what the truth is? Who owns a story? It’s these questions that Nadja wanted to explore. “Within families there often isn’t any kind of historical record, but there often is a real battle for who has the truth.”

nadja-and-mother

Nadja and her mother, Françoise Mouly

Serendipity at the 2017 Sydney Writers’ Festival was last modified: July 13th, 2018 by Anne Skyvington
memoir at the Sydney Film Festival 2017Robert Dessaix at the 2017 Sydney Writers Festivalthe universality of mother/daughter problemswho is Nadja Spiegelman?
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Anne Skyvington

I have been a reader/writer all of my life as far back as I can remember. Blogging has opened me up to another world, where I can share my skills and continue to create through word and picture. Writing is about seeing the world and recreating it for others to see through different eyes.

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2 comments

IAN WELLS June 12, 2017 at 10:02 pm

I often write of my past. I cherish reminiscing. Each exercise’s creation is celebratory; a way to eulogize the beauty of my life and my memories of it.
Sorry Anne, but I have to take exception to your statement, “This memoir also recognises the truth of the infallibility of memory”.
I know from personal experience that two people who share an experience can later have different memories of it. Memory is far from infallible. It is easy to manipulate memories. One of the major researchers in this field is Elizabeth Loftus. Studies show memories are fugitive (i.e. fade over time) or modifiable over time through the effects of newer experiences. Our memory is never truly true or really real. Instead it’s just a partial recollection of something that happened in the past, we didn’t probably see or know the full truth when it happened in the first place. And we unknowingly introduced additional inaccuracies when we interpreted it, stored it and retrieved it. You can see this clearly in criminal trials when eye witnesses all honestly give different versions of their truth.
All we can do is pass on or record our memories, perhaps as memoirs, and leave an interpretation of what (we think) happened.
Never-the-less I of course enjoyed reading SERENDIPITY AT THE 2017 SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL, as I have done with your earlier creative forays and look forward eagerly to reading more soon.

Right/write on!

Reply
Anne Skyvington June 12, 2017 at 10:05 pm

Thanks for pointing this out, Ian. it’s a mistake: I meant fallibility, of course. Each mother/daughter pair in this story have differing memories of the same event/s. I’ll change it now. Thanks for your comment and the additional information re Elizabeth Loftus.

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Anne Skyvington

Anne Skyvington is a writer based in Sydney who has been practising and teaching creative writing skills for many years. You can learn here about structuring a short story and how to go about creating a longer work, such as a novel or a memoir. Subscribe to this blog and receive a monthly newsletter on creative writing topics and events.

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About The Author

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Anne Skyvington is a Sydney-based writer and blogger. <a href="http://anneskyvington.com.au She has self-published a novel, 'Karrana' and is currently writing a creative memoir based on her life and childhood with a spiritual/mystical dimension.

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