CHLOE HIGGINS
Chloe Higgins is director of the Wollongong Writers Festival, a casual lecturer and tutor in creative writing at the University of Wollongong, and a member of the Finishing School Collective. The Girls (Pan Macmillan) – a memoir about family, grief and sexuality – is her stunning and thought-provoking debut. Can you tell us about your new book?
In 2005, when I was 17, my two sisters passed away in a car accident. I went from being a straight-A student and that annoying kid who’d rip a cigarette out of a friend’s mouth asking if they knew it was going to kill them, to sinking into several years of psych wards, sex work and travelling. But these things are really just a back story. For me, The Girls is actually about trying to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with my parents within the context of our shared grief and my past shames. My mother is desperate to hold tight to her last remaining child but I, as a 30-year-old, am hungry to figure out who I am separate from my parents, and what a healthy adult life looks like.
How long did the memoir take to complete, and how did you find the writing process?
There’s a couple of answers to this question. From start to finish, it took me about 12 years. But much of that was me doing my writing apprenticeship (that is to say, studying creative writing at university). I had been trying to write the book on my own for about four years, realised I couldn’t, and so went to university to learn how to write – both in terms of craft and process. During that time, I spent about five years writing fiction before I returned to memoir – and then in 2016, I started The Girls from scratch again. I wrote that ‘first’ draft in about three months, spent a year editing it on my own, then a year editing it with my publisher. The process was really beautiful. People seem to think it must have been a painful process, but actually it was quite the opposite. Those early years of writing were painful – very, very painful – because I didn’t understand my own process. But by 2016, writing had become a joy.
What’s your advice for writing a memoir?
Read and write, every day. It sounds basic, but I find it odd how often people are surprised that it takes time to learn how to write well. I believe in perseverance over talent any day – and I think of all the art forms, this holds especially true for writing. Beyond that, learn to notice. Both what’s going on around you and what’s going on inside you. And then finally, ‘tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth’. Even when it hurts. A first draft is not meant to be concerned with fears of who is going to read it or how you’re going to come off. Those are questions for much, much later.