Barbara Else has written award-winning fiction for decades, but didnt think her life story had enough "drama" to make an interesting memoir.
But after starting to write down memories of the "little incidents" that seemed to deeply affect her life, Else realised her own experiences were as interesting as anything she could make up. The result is Laughing at the Dark.
New Zealand writer Barbara Else Photo: Penguin Books New Zealand
The cover of Laughing at the Dark - a memoir by NZ writer Barbara Else Photo: Penguin Books New Zealand
Else discovered that her experiences in the '60s, '70s and '80s formed a picture of patriarchal control quite different to gender dynamics today.
''[Nowadays] relationships between young people don't seem to be as gender biased as they used to be… It's much more mutual and supportive, I think, which is wonderful."
At the time Else began seriously writing the memoir she was very ill and didnt expect to finish it in "whatever time" she had left.
Accepting a place in an experimental drug trial, she lost her ability to make up stories while undergoing treatment.
"By the time I was having treatment, I didnt have any brain power to invent anything so I thought I can keep going with the memoir … [Writing down what happened] was easier and it also gave structure to my days. Even when I was feeling awful because of the medication or whatever, I could still write something, even if it was just a paragraph. That kept me going, think."
Else's treatment was successful and now she says her health is great.
"I go into the oncology department these days for a regular appointment and they smile at me and look so happy and proud that I'm a success story… I don't have a large tank of energy but I can pace myself and I'm a success story."
To tell her own story, Else took inspiration from the lives of the successful Kiwi women she'd written about in the non-fiction children's storybook Go Girl, which usually included an element of struggle.
"What is it in my own personal background that I could pull out and say 'that was important' to figure out how I became whatever I am?"
Else says she came across as "very judgmental" in the early drafts of her memoir before she realised the best approach was to simply write down what had happened.
"It's showing little incidents, little moments, that had an effect on me, that either were very funny and absurd or that puzzled me… those little moments I could still remember very clearly so I just wrote them all down. They do build up to a view of what the '60s and '70s and '80s were like … but it wasn't until the third draft at least that I realised this was [also] a picture of how the patriarchy were controlling things [in those decades]."
Else's father was a bank manager and the family moved a lot. "Following the man's job" was an acceptable way for families to live at the time, she says, and it's a mark of progress that banks tend not to expect that of their employees anymore.
Wherever her family was living, Else's mother's beautiful vases and bowls and bookcases were a constant, she says, but compassion was not.
At 11, when she told her mother that a man on a bus had said some strange things to her (an unpleasant first experience of sexual attention), her mother silently got up and left the room.
"It was a little lesson in 'you just let men do what they want and you don't criticise, you don't comment…' I wanted reassurance about this odd thing and there was none."
Later, Else completed an MA and was excited about the possibility of studying for a PhD until she mentioned the idea to her first husband Jim.
When he something to the effect of 'Do you really want to be a doctor before your husband?', she fell silent.
"Society at that time expected women to be conventional housewives, not try and better their husbands … So I was as guilty as anyone at not taking that further. I think that's why I remember it so vividly.
"Inside I was wanting to push against it but I didnt have the strength or the vision to do so, early on … and I had two little children so you can't do much when you've got that to deal with."
Jim eventually became a physician and an internationally celebrated academic.
For 20 years, he promised his wife - and she believed - that he would eventually slow down his career so they'd have more time together.
Eventually, she packed her car and took off to live with the man who would become her second husband.
Else hopes readers of Laughing at the Dark - the cover of which features a late-'60s photo of her carrying a shotgun in a university stage show - will be inspired to write down and reflect on their own formative memories.
"When I began it, I thought 'nothing very much dramatic has happened to me' but then I thought by the third draft or so these incidents are building into a story, there is something there."
She encourages other people to think back on the memories that seem to shape their own lives.
"Write down some little things you remember. Don't judge them. Just write down what happened and how you felt then … and just value your own life, value those incidents. If you remember them they must mean something and you can maybe find out what they mean. At least it will be interesting, it might be valuable.
"Even a little life, as I thought mine is, even a little uneventful life will have moments that helped shape you, so examine them for your own self-confidence."
Although it's "very early days", Else is now writing fiction again - since the memoir she's already completed a short story collection and a new novel is underway.
"Yes, there is more writing to be done, which is marvellous."
Listen to a selection of Barbara Else's children's stories in StoryTime.
