In exactly ten days (as I write this!) the culmination of three years of work, ten years of writing seriously, and many, many hours of dreams, years and prayers, will be launched out into the wild.
That’s right! From August 28, 2021, you can be holding a copy of my memoir, Two Sisters and a Brain Tumour, in your hands.
Thrilled doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel – and I hope you’re getting excited too! To tide us all over until the launch, I’ve been posting a series of articles on my author website. They answer common questions, like:
What books influenced my memoir?
What does my sister think about my memoir?
My plea to you
As the publication date for Two Sisters comes closer, I’m beginning to realise how inadequate my memoir is. As a depiction of Watching, it’s painfully limited. It’s one person’s story, in one time, in one place. That doesn’t mean it’s redundant, but it does mean we need more. We need more well-written, engaging stories of our life as Watchers. We need more tales of tragedy and patience, joy and persistence. We need your stories, all of them, every single one of them! They might not all be published, but they all need to be told. In telling we confer a value onto our experiences, a value which they already hold in God’s eyes. Our lives are the materials with which he works.
Not only so, but stories create community, and community breathes hope. Loneliness is so often not the absence of people, but the absence of people with stories like your own. Every time you share your story to someone new, even if that story is two sentences long in a queue at the shops, there’s a chance you might change a life. We are all people who need to hear stories, who need to hear that we are not alone.
For this reason, it’s important that we think about our stories. We can’t tell them well, or share them helpfully if we bottle up our reactions and sweep away our experiences. On the other hand, a story pondered in the presence of God, is a story which has the chance to change the world for the better.
A few years ago I wrote an essay in answer to the question: Why Do I Write? I’ve included part of it below, because in the lead up to the launch of Two Sisters it remains as true as ever.
Why do I write?
…
When I come across a story like this, it changes my life just a little. Truth does that. Now, as I look back through the years, I see these novels [which changed my life] as one sees water drops sparkling in the twilight.
And so I write.
I struggle across the calendar pages, bearing this desire [to write] over my back, my own paper cross, a part of me which cannot be exorcised. Each year the numbered pages turn quicker and I fight harder to weave the stories I never got to read.
Not because I am confident I can, but because I have to try.
For I do not want them [life-changing stores] to be rare gems but common ones. Garden variety, preferably. When I close my eyes for a breath and still my aching fingers, I see people reading books and re-learning how to love and respond to others. I see communities sitting down and chewing over chapters and laughing as they cry, understanding that pain and loss are something we must talk about.
I see another thirteen year old, embarking on a quest, like all girls becoming women do, but her search is different to mine.
She is not hunting for my holy grail, she had no need to. Mine is splashed across the people and pages around her, ripe for the picking, glittering as a jewel.
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