Jo Buchanan Hay

Constance started life suddenly in 1993. The first paragraphs leapt fully formed on to the page. The journey to the village soon followed, but family crises prevented my returning to write more until the early 2000s. That’s when after a Creative Writing course a group of us started meeting up to encourage and critique each others’ work. Thus was born ‘Literary Ladies Wot Lunch’. It forced me to work on Constance regularly whilst still selling books with Dorling Kindersley. Work and other commitments led to this group disbanding but one of the ladies became a mentor and great encourager as I revisited ‘The Novel’ sporadically over the next few years.

She warned me that all first books are autobiographical, but I disagreed! Mine was simply going to be a memoir of a beloved aunt, to honour her memory by means of my own memories, fuelled by my mother's recollections of their life before I was born.

Later she told me that this was more my story than my aunt’s, and as I began to write more frequently and consistently I realized this was very true. The little girl had begun to feature more prominently as the narrator grew to adulthood, and she began to recognize the similarities between their two lives. The title had to change, for this and other reasons: it became Constance and Me.

The other reason for this change was that originally I could find no other books with the name ‘Constance’ in the title, but by now there were quite a few. Also back then the only ‘Diamond Path’ – my subtitle – was a book on Buddhism. Now there are several such, but I couldn't let the phrase go. My Diamond Path may only feature in a few chapters but it is still very important! The artwork also had to change. For years I had cherished a photograph of this path for the book's front cover, but covers should reflect the main thrust of the contents, which was Constance herself of course. Therefore, regretfully, my Diamond Path photo was relegated to the back cover.

As I continued to capture my thoughts on paper I found I was now fictionalising nearly everything, needing to flesh out characters and events as memories only go so far! The parts with the young niece are more or less authentic, although greatly expanded, but nearly everything else is from my imagination, vaguely inspired by what my mother and aunt had told me about their early lives, but much augmented in the telling. Many locations and incidents have been made up or very heavily altered, and many of the people aren’t real at all. Of the ‘real’ people mentioned, I cannot pretend I ever knew any of them. I recall hearing long ago on television that ‘Names have been changed to protect the innocent’, and many ‘innocents’ here have been greatly embellished, to the point that none will be recognisable. Only the three main characters are basically true-to-life, although many aspects of their lives as written are not.

I debated long and hard about the ethics of ‘making stuff up’ and using real people and events as a (very, very loose) basis for a fiction, and took great comfort about squaring my ‘facts’ with my ‘creativity’ from the following quote from William Holtz in The Ghost in The Little House:

“ … biography permits not only the truth of certainty but also the truths of probability and approximation, and beyond these, the truth of character that is caught in years of personal witness … “

“ … my role as interpreter of this voice, making judgments where I can, … freeing the voice of my subject from the documents [memories] to make its own display of its humanity …. the authentic pathos of a life as it was lived”.

As the writing flowed I found my concerns dissipated. I was staying true to the character of each of those I loved, and as the story of their lives unfolded in my story, I was sure I was making everything an authentic possibility. My book was no longer a memoir, it was a novel. It may not all be ‘true’, but there is much truth in it.

I was delighted (and relieved) to complete Constance and Me in 2023. The efforts involved in bringing it to fruition are documented in my first Newsletter.