On Memoirs
Self-authoring (and parenting) through a pandemic, audiobook memoirs, and podcast news
Hi everyone.
A slightly different post this time around than my usual essays.
This is more of an update on what I’ve been working on, announcing a project I’m releasing soon, and some reflections on writing, memoirs, and those covid years.
Project Incoming! 😍
In July and August of this year I’ll be posting a chapter/essay/episode (each week for 8 or so weeks) on this Substack of my memoir/autobiography:
Shedding Skin - Confessions of an Itchoholic
(The ‘Confessions of an Itchoholic’ byline narrowly beat out ‘Tales From a Calamitous Nervous System’ and the less glamorous ‘Middle Class White Boy With Eczema Searches For Meaning Of Life During Confusing 90s’.)
This memoir is part chronicle of a chronic health sufferer (can a healthy developing mind exist in an inflamed and disrupted body?), part psychological thriller (will he survive the strict rules and lack of emotional parenting techniques of the 90s?), part philosophical tome (can he understand his brain and discover the meaning of life and pass that to his kids?), part critique of generational parenting techniques (is addiction, trauma and shouting heritable?), part exploration of drugs, alcohol and altered states (can he find a way to face himself with altered states or are they only for hiding from oneself?) and all rollicking adventure through 80s and 90s culture - its music, TV, movies, religion and advertising.
(All these questions and more will not be answered!!)
Further to the above, it’s about my search for authenticity and connection through the fog of isolation and itchiness, it’s about drug and alcohol addiction, loss and paranoia, and becoming a new parent and the calamitous catastrophes that befell me as I began to raise new people.
It’s also about awe, and the cliche of searching for (and finding) self love.
Guided, as always for me, by those mystical poets of my generation - rock stars. 🎸
I’ve tried to make these oft heavy themes as funny, relatable and accessible as possible - but you can be the judge if I pull this off or not. My take is that the bulk of human life is a tightrope walk between tragedy and comedy, the depth and the surface, the pain and the joy - so there is no walking into these heavy themes without the levity of humour to allow us safely in there. Feedback from the poor souls who read early drafts of this manuscript (you know who you are, endless thanks to you 🙏🏻) was consistently along the lines of “I laughed and cried”.
I’m excited to share it with you in this self-publishing, serial-substack episodic kinda way.
But wait, there’s more!
Each chapter will also include an audio version to listen to, which will also form the first 10 episodes of season 1 of my podcast, ingeniously titled Shedding Skin Podcast. 😎
I’ve spent the last 9 months recording, editing and adding an array of sound bites, 80s and 90s TV/movie/music clips, 80s and 90s ads and jingles, soundscapes and all sorts of aural delights to spice up the dulcet tones of my voice for your listening pleasure.
Why the HELL did I do this? (Legit question, I have asked myself that many times. More on audio memoirs below… )
Self Authoring and Parenting Through the Pandemic
I wrote this memoir/autobiography over a 20 month period during 2022 and 2023, as we wormed our way out of the covid-19 pandemic. I turned 40 one year into the pandemic (gasp!), and was experiencing a long period of reflection about who I was and what my life was about.
As you do.
During this time my wife and I found ourselves deep in the work of raising little people - our eldest started prep at school in 2020 a few weeks before covid closed everything, and our youngest had only been born 8 months earlier. Like many of my contemporaries, we found ourselves birthing and raising little folks as we watched the world change and shift around us.
Let’s never forget dashing into the supermarket with masks on, worrying about touching trolley handles or fruit, fear of catching the plague running through our fried brains. With little help from GPs for run of the mill ear infections, or interstate family as the borders closed, we soldiered on.
Gerry Harvey got millions in covid payments. House prices doubled. Crazy times…
Mid 2020 we closed our little art gallery and retail shop Brown’s General Store, a passion project for my wife Cate (and I, but mainly her) that was always on the very margins of economic survival - an actual brick and mortar store supporting artisans, creatives and ethical businesses? Insanity!
Throw in a retail-crushing pandemic and it went up in a puff of smoke.
Don’t look back, just keep moving.
a few pics of Browns in Paddington, Brisbane
Self authoring a ‘book’ during this world-changing time was a part of my process of investigating myself in the hope of becoming a better dad. I would look at my (now) 9 year old son and hope that he wasn’t feeling many of the feelings that I was at his age. (I certainly would like him to avoid the extreme delinquency phase I went through - covered in episode 5!. Only time will tell if as teens my boys buck as hard and rebel against the “tyranny” of their culture like I did….)
Much of the job of parenting is noticing where you are falling short of effectively parenting yourself, because you can’t ask little people to be better, to ‘grow up’ if you are not doing that too. Your children become a mirror that reflects back to you things about yourself that can (in our case) be difficult to understand and require a lot of effort to work through. All of a sudden you may find yourself parenting down to your kids, whilst re-parenting yourself, and even parenting ‘up’ to your boomer parents!)
A parents work is never done!
What Publishing Industry?
As I was writing my memoir I had *delusions of grandeur* that it could maybe, possibly, be a real book, like actually be published. 😵💫
When Shedding Skin was long listed for the Richell Prize for emerging writers, this became slightly more of a possibility,
However.
Reality has a way of imposing itself, regardless of delusions of grandeur.
Whilst I was writing Shedding Skin I read a bunch of memoirs/autobiographies to get an idea of how real writers do this. Here’s a list of some of them:
Stephen King, Carrie Fisher, Amy Thunig, Jonathan Rosen, Sharon Stone, Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, Myf Warhurst, Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou (Silverchair), Hannah Gadsby, Britney Spears, Anna Spargo-Ryan, Terrance McKenna, Matthew Perry.
After reading so many of these great memoirs, I had a SHOCKING realisation, conveniently only after I had written my memoir. Almost all of these people/writers are already known, already famous, already familiar to everyone. Not all of them, but most.
And that no one would read a memoir from someone they had never heard of. Gasp!
I asked myself, would I read a memoir written by me if I didn’t know of me previously? The terrifying answer that arrived, as I surveyed the over 200,000 words I had written, whittled down to a more palatable 80,000, with multiple edits over many months and stretching into years, was:
Probably not 😂
I wouldn’t even buy my own goddamn book!!
How could I convince others to, if I probably wouldn’t do it myself?
Screwed me again, Pennypacker!
Audio Books
Then, something happened. I realised I would probably listen to my book, if it was in a podcasty form. I listen to a lot of podcasts (too many), and a lot of audio books (not enough). The majority of the books listed above I listed to in audio format, spoken by the authors. We can argue about whether Audiobooks are the same as reading, but I’ll leave the final word to the King:
I cannot tell you how much better it is to hear Sharon Stone, or Mathew Perry or Martin Sheen read you their own memoir, rather than you read it and hear in your head as your own voice. Revelatory!
The other thing I noticed is that the really good podcasts I listen to are well researched and the majority of the content is pre-written, and then spoken. So, everything in my ears, other than free-form dialogue, is writing - actual books, audio books, podcasts, substacks. It’s all writing! So, I decided to read my writing and it’s been a fun process to tinker with it as I go, and shape it into a hybrid audiobook/podcast thing along the way.
It’s worth mentioning that whilst writing it, I wasn’t doing so in order to get it published. The process was very enjoyable, and words, sentences and ideas kept falling on me for many months about how to make it better, more interesting, more funny and relatable. This process was incredible, and existed regardless of any (non existent) publishing options, and fuelled the fire of my passion for writing in general.
Another Book
When I realised that I may not even buy and read my own book *facepalm*, this lead to an epiphany so large that it caused the solar flares and world-wide borealis that we saw a few months back. Here it is:
WRITE THE BOOK YOU WOULD INSTANTLY PICK UP AND READ
This is so incredibly obvious. *Another facepalm*
Yet it hit with the force of a shimmering rainbow borealis on a cold clear night. You can definitely do worse as a writing mantra. It means you are following your passions, pointing yourself in the precise direction that is most likely to sustain you to reach whatever goal you have for the project.
So with that, I began writing my next book, which should come as no surprise to anyone, is about drugs 😂
As Eric Hoel notes in this essay about writing, it is incredibly rare to make money from writing. My take on the industry is that I will most likely take little part in it, aside from self publishing on this here substack, currently free. Yet, I’m driven to find words to explain my human experience largely for the love of it, and the personal challenge of writing another book feels inspiring even as its vastness crushes me and it is incomprehensibly improbable that I will succeed.
But I’m trying!
Yes, yes.
“Try not! Do.
Or do not.
There is no try.” Thanks Yoda.
So, in summary - new Shedding Skin Podcast!
With Season 1 being my memoir Confessions of an Itchoholic! 10 episodes posted over 7 or 8 weeks. I recommend the enhanced audio versions, but the written versions will be posted along with the audio. I am an audio guy, you may not be. All good, horses, courses.
And in the meantime I’ll be writing my 2nd book on drugs and altered states, in-between raising little people, wondering if we have enough home and contents insurance, and ignoring that new noise our car is making until the service is due (which was many months ago).
Lots of love all.
Nick x
Clips
Seinfeld - Pennypacker www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjP3PHwaYGY
Star Wars Yoda - www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4yd2W50No
Links
Eric Hoel Substack link on writing -