Workshop: “Mapping
Another Life” (Writing Biography)
Kevin Chong, born in Hong Kong, educated (MFA in fiction writing) at the University of British Columbia, lives and works in Vancouver.
Kevin teaches writing creative fiction and writing creative nonfiction (beginner to advanced levels) at UBC and SFU (and gets an “A” on Rate-My-Professors with a chili-pepper on the 'hotness' rating).
He's the author of:
Nonfiction
- Northern Dancer: The Legendary Horse that
Inspired a Nation, 2014
- My Year of The Race Horse, 2012
- Neil Young Nation: a quest, an obsession, and a true story, 2005. (Crisscrossing the continent, Chong follows the route that led Neil Young to
become a musical legend.)
Novels
- Beauty Plus Pity, 2011
- Baroque-a-Nova, 2001
A
volunteer introducer reads the intro to Kevin’s workshop which says he’s “a showdog handler and jazz
musician.” When she concludes, Kevin tells us it’s all lies.
“My
first tip on writing biography is not to use Wikipedia,” he quips. Apparently a
friend and he had some kind of gag that resulted in this information going into
his Wikipedia biography and there it remains, untrue.
Background
to Northern Dancer
--how in Northern Dancer his tack was to write about the
people who loved the horse:
· E.P. Taylor (owner);
· The Argentinian trainer. Quite a character:
asked what he wanted after he died, he said he wanted to be “turned into a
woman’s saddle so I can be between the two things I loved the most.”
· Jockey Bill Hartack
--and
about how Canada was in 1964 (Kevin was born in 1975). The only people he
talked to were some riders and that was
by phone.
“I
remember Canada being much more insecure than it is now. We didn’t feel we
could beat the best. Then Northern Dancer showed we could beat the best.”
Kevin’s
own experience in horse-racing before he wrote ND: he’d written one book
about it before, about how he bought a horse at Hastings Racetrack which had
some Northern Dancer blood.
Kevin talked about the many things you need to consider before you start the actual writing.
About biography subjects:
· Does he/she have to be famous?
· Does he/she have to be human? Can write bios
of inanimate objects, e.g., Salt; or The Suit,a book by JJ Lee that wove in
stories about his father, a tailor. There are sometimes called “cultural
histories.”
· Does the subject have to be one person
(companies> corporate histories)?
Ways
you can write about a life:
· Memoir – can be writing about
segments/periods in your life – i.e. just divorced and took a trip to Italy;
your lifelong interest in soccer; an interest in your life – e.g. The 100 Mi. Diet
· Autobiography – Writing about your own life,
the world that you came from. You try not to skip any of the events of your life (but they
may be separate books).
· Biography (“I consider bio to be cradle to
dotage”)
· Co-authored Autobiography – examples: Facebook’s
Sheryl Sandberg’s; Justin Trudeau’s
Considerations
about the book, approaches to the subject, etc.
· How will your book be different?
· Initial Research >Writing a proposal.
“Before you travel to Paris – has anyone else written a book on your subject?
Check on the internet.”
· Is the person still alive? Do they want to
work with you? Or if recently deceased, is there anyone else working on an
authorized biography?
· Tip: approach your subject with a thesis or a
statement or a question – so the bio does not become a recitation of dry
facts. “He was born… died…..”
· His thesis for Northern Dancer - that ND “changed the way Canadians felt about
themselves in 1964. Northern Dancer was a hero when the country really needed
one.” (i.e. we were between having been a colony of Britain and becoming a kind
of economic colony of the U.S.)
· If you’re writing your own life, you might
want to talk to key figures in it.
Your spouse and “If you’re brave, your former spouse. “Their actual sense of
what happened might be different from yours.”
Subject
- Living person:
· Interviews - let them pick the place, their
comfort area; bring a list of questions but be flexible.
· Famous person – “go sideways a bit.”
· Don’t be afraid of awkward pauses – they may
fill them with something interesting.
· Good to have a recorder. Yet the technique
of, at some point, turning the recorder off: “People become more animated. but
you are still taking notes.”
· For famous or other people – you want to
speak to anyone who knows about them – people who knew them as kids. About the
middle age years ,talk to their children).
· Talk to their enemies.
· Other sources: news clips – magazine profiles
(how they felt in 1963 vs. say 2014). Then can ask them about why they felt a
certain way back when they did.
· Old photos – present them to the subject – sparks
new memories.
Subject
- deceased person:
·
Library and archival research; travel to
[pertinent] locales.
·
Interviews – Experts on that person work or
on the era or place that person lived; regional content. It may tell you about their influence,
influence of their work, etc.
·
Kevin made a trip to Ottawa for Northern Dancer. Had to get permission to
access the archives. Became sticky because the person designated by EP Taylor
to give acces had died – so Kevi had to prove to the archives that Taylor’s
grandsons had the authority to grant him access.
Why
you?
Why
are you the one who needs to tell the story? Could be important.
Other
considerations:
· Question from audience: Have there been
themes or motives for what Kevin’s written about? Answer: I wanted to know more
about a subject. So I don’t start off as an expert - e.g., the Neil Young book: “I needed to write my own
personal biographical story about being a fan of his.”
· His first book was on a racehorse: “I wanted
to learn more about horse racing and folded in my own anxiety about a young
adult who had accomplished what I wanted to do in life. I was hoping other YAs,
who had crossed things off on their list, could identify what he was going
through.”
Structure
· Suppose someone’s accomplishments were in
midlife, you might not have the chronology go from 20 yrs. to 80 yrs. in the
same intensity.
· First in Northern
Dancer, he used an unconventional order, then his editor’s suggestion, told
it chronologically – thought it was clearer
· Tip:
“A lot of biographies start off with a scene from the middle of the life
– then go to the early days. We want to get a sense of hwy this person is
important/interesting/etc. (example – he used the EP Taylor anecdote right off
about going into the mid-Atlantic lifeboat in his pajamas).(c)
· Tense (thinkinga bout which to use – present,
past). He did Northern Dancer in the
present tense.
· Voice - finding your authorial voice –
Objective or journalistic or opinionated? Considerations: Closeness to your
subject. What’s the approach that best serves the story?
--Margo Lamont
(c)2014 Margo Lamont
