The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #58: Allegra Huston
"When I first decided to write the book and told my sister Anjelica, all she said was, 'Be kind.' I was—and honest too."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 58th installment, featuring Allegra Huston, author of Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow, and Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, among other books. -Sari Botton
Allegra Huston is the author of Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found and co-author of Write What You Don't Know, the book of the Imaginative Storm method which she developed in partnership with James Navé. She has written three other books, along with numerous screenplays and journalism for publications in the US and the UK. Her short film Good Luck, Mr. Gorski, has become a cult favorite. She teaches an annual 5-day memoir workshop in Nova Scotia and writes a regular Substack newsletter, Imaginative Storm on Substack.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I'm 60. I wrote a few travel articles in my 20s to help pay for my holidays—sparked by a visit to Graceland and the hilarity of the tour guide's spiel. I started writing screenplays in my 30s, and then some magazine articles. I wrote my memoir Love Child in my 40s, my novel A Stolen Summer in my early 50s.
The Imaginative Storm project, which is my focus for the rest of my life, really got going in 2020; that's when my creative collaborator James Navé and I started work on Write What You Don't Know.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
Write What You Don't Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow, 2022, though I imagine you want to focus on Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, 2009. I published the audiobook in 2019; I'm the voice reading it.
What number book is this for you?
Four and two halves:
Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found, 2009
A Stolen Summer (Say My Name in hardback), 2018
How to Edit and Be Edited, 2018
How to Read for an Audience (with James Navé), 2018
Write What You Don’t Know, (with James Navé), 2022
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
Love Child is a straight-up memoir.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
When I was four, my mother was killed in a car crash. After she died, I was introduced to my father: an intimidating man wreathed in cigar smoke, the film director John Huston. Then, when I was 12, I was told that Dad wasn't actually my father and I met my biological father, the British historian and media personality John Julius Norwich. Love Child is the story of my odyssey to discover in which family I belonged, and finally to pull my own family together around me—with the realization that the chains of DNA and marriage certificates don't define a family: love does.
Love Child is the story of my odyssey to discover in which family I belonged, and finally to pull my own family together around me—with the realization that the chains of DNA and marriage certificates don't define a family: love does.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
As a child, I toyed with the idea of becoming a writer because it meant I could live anywhere. The problem was, I didn't like writing. I was very self-critical and felt that I wasn't creative, especially compared to the artistic folks who surrounded me. Getting a degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford University lodged me firmly in the world of criticism and judgment—not creativity.
So, I went to work in an office and eventually became Editorial Director of the London publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson. But as you will guess, working in an office didn't suit me, and to be honest I wasn't a good publisher. I was a good editor, but I wasn't good at the schmoozing and office politics that being a good publisher requires.
I decided I would write screenplays—knowing the odds against getting anything made, but confident that I'd beat them. After thirty years and many screenplays written, I still haven't. But I remain hopeful!
In 1998, I moved from London to Taos, New Mexico, a small town where there weren't many jobs available. I focused on journalism, and wrote a piece about how lucky I feel to have two fathers (published in Harper's Bazaar UK as "Daddies' Girl"). After that, three people urged me to write a memoir, and though to begin with I thought I'd said everything I had to say in 1500 words, the idea simmered. I had thought of writing something about "going in search of my mother"—who was widely loved, and whom I didn't know. So, the two ideas coalesced and I began work on what would become Love Child.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
Having been a publisher, I knew I'd need an outline and a sample chapter or two in order to get an advance (which I desperately needed). I was pretty confident! I knew where the story ended: with my son's christening in the Rio Grande, when all the members of my family came to Taos—some of whom had never met each other before.
But where did it begin? With my birth? With my earliest memories? With my mother's story, which I very much wanted to tell, or with myself, setting out in search of it? How would the chapters break: by year, by which house I lived in? I came up with outline after outline, and none of them convinced me.
Still, onwards! I started writing the sample chapter, which I figured should be the first one. At the time, I thought it would cover my childhood before my mother died. But as I wrote down the few memories I have, I could see there was no story. OK, I thought, I'll have to start somewhere that definitely isn't the beginning, so I wrote a chapter about when I was eight and living on Long Island with my Italian grandpa, who stood on his head on the roof all day long, largely naked, singing "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" and "O Sole Mio."
Every publisher in London turned the proposal down (I don't think it had a title yet; certainly not the title it has now), but fortunately Simon & Schuster US made an offer so I could afford to work on the book full-time.
Eventually I had to go back to those early memories, and as I sat in a coffee shop generating material (I've learned to call it that, because if I'm not "writing" I'm not tempted to try to write well), I closed my eyes and took myself back to one memory in particular—and realized it didn't add up. The view from the window to the street wasn't the angle from the room I was in. My mother's car was to the right, then it was to the left. She was there, and then she wasn't. It was genuinely upsetting. I very nearly gave up, but fortunately I couldn't afford to pay back the advance so giving up wasn't an option. I thought, "Dammit, if I can't write what I remember, I'll write what I don't remember!" That was just to keep my butt in the chair that day—I never dreamed that material would end up in the final book. But it did, and I discovered that it created a powerful connection to readers, since most of us are haunted by not being able to remember things that are very important to us.
That moment was the germ of what became the book Write What You Don't Know and a major milestone in the development of the Imaginative Storm method.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
After a year, I'd generated 300 handwritten pages of material, deliberately written out of order (another hack to stop myself trying to write well), typed it all up, and was trying to put it in order. And the outline I'd finally settled on was useless. I whined to various friends, and one recommended I read Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
It's the story of him coming to terms with his disappointing father, whom he hasn't seen for decades until the day when he, Nick Flynn, is working in a homeless shelter and guess who walks through the door. That's his beginning, and it released me from thinking I was supposed to go chronologically.
Where does my story start? Obviously, when I lose my mother. That's when I lost the only family and home I knew. That's what started my odyssey. It just wasn't obvious to me until I read Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I realized that as I was generating material, I'd seize up or get bland if I was second-guessing myself about how various people would feel about what I was writing. So I decided I'd write whatever I wanted, finish and edit the book, and then read it once over thinking only about what might offend whom. I don't think I changed anything.
Then, before delivering it to the publisher, I sent the whole book to all the members of my family in the same email, all names visible so everyone could see they were all getting it at once, and asked them to let me know if they wanted any changes. Only two people said they did: my stepmother, who wanted me to correct two errors of fact (no problem), and my brother Danny's mother, who wanted me to soften scenes in which Dad (John Huston) didn't come out very well. I didn't change them: they were true to my experience of him.
When I first decided to write the book and told my sister Anjelica, all she said was, "Be kind." I was—and honest too. Nobody buys a character who's a paragon of perfection, but I tried to portray any unflattering moments without judgment.
When I was four, my mother was killed in a car crash. After she died, I was introduced to my father: an intimidating man wreathed in cigar smoke, the film director John Huston. Then, when I was 12, I was told that Dad wasn't actually my father and I met my biological father, the British historian and media personality John Julius Norwich.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
Many of us want to write well, think we can write well, and then discover that when we try to write well we hate the results. We also write the story or stories we've always told—and if you tell great stories, your friends are going to say, "You should write a memoir!" But stories that work great around the dinner table usually don't hold together in a memoir, and when you write up those stories they tend to feel flat and lifeless. When that happens, you're likely to come to the conclusion that you're just not a good writer, or you're not that creative. But that isn't true.
Everyone is hugely creative: it's just a question of learning how to access the full bounty of your imaginative intelligence. If you want to write with verve, originality, and authenticity, you have to surprise yourself as you generate material. This is not something your rational mind can do. You might think that imagination isn't relevant when you're writing memoir, because it's nonfiction, but your imagination's input is what gives your writing emotional power.
This is the goal of Write What You Don't Know: to help you stop trying to write well and learn how to let your imagination surprise you. (It's available as a book, an audio course, a video course, and a live 10-week course led by Navé, as he's known. All info at imaginativestorm.com.)
What do you love about writing?
I love the feeling of exploration when I write. Most of what I write now is about writing and about imaginative intelligence, and it's only by writing that I come to know what I think. Plus, I get insights and make connections that would never happen if I wasn't writing what I don't know. (This is the subject of my Substack post on November 18.)
I also love the throwaway writing I generate twice a week on the Imaginative Storm Prompt of the Week on Zoom. Most of it won't ever go anywhere, but it delights me, even when objectively it's not very strong, because the exploration is fun. I also find that my life is better with this weekly practice: my range of awareness and empathy is wider, and my serious writing benefits from the looseness and playfulness that kind of writing encourages.
In screenplays, I love the challenge of telling a story with so much unsaid and unwritten. In my novel, I loved pulling together bits of characters and places I know and combining them into new characters and places. In LOVE CHILD, I loved the new understanding of myself, my shadows, and my mother that emerged.
What frustrates you about writing?
The publication process for my novel was intensely frustrating and responsible for my not having embarked on another one. Which, now, I'm grateful for, because that allowed the space for Navé and me to explore our method and start the Imaginative Storm project.
Since then, I've published our books myself. I think publishing may be going the way of the music business, where artists record and put out their work and then maybe it will be picked up by a major label. Sending out demos is no longer the route. As writers, we also can take responsibility for putting our work out into the world.
I imagine many people are frustrated by how difficult it is to find readers. That was certainly the case with my novel, and obviously it's frustrating that none of my feature screenplays has yet been made. Still, I'm proud of them and I like that I've written them. I have to find enough satisfaction in that to outweigh the frustration. I feel like they're my children who haven't yet been appreciated by the wider world. They may yet.
What about writing surprises you?
As much as possible, when I'm the one who's writing!
What surprises me most about writing in general is that, after over twenty years of teaching workshops, I have seen that everyone, and I do mean everyone, is capable of writing something with energy and emotional impact. I used to believe that writers were a special breed, gifted by the gods with writing talent. I don't believe that anymore. Yes, some people are gifted with easy access to their imaginative intelligence and a natural storytelling ability—but I've learned that there is no such thing as an uncreative person, and no such thing as someone who "can't write." Not everyone can write a good memoir or a good novel or a good poem, but everyone can write a good something.
I was also very surprised to discover that the weekly practice of throwaway writing was a life-enhancing activity—not just for me, but for all the regulars on our Zoom. When Navé and I began working on Write What You Don't Know, we were writing for people who want to write. Now, we see that what we have is a way to explore into your imaginative intelligence—not just for writers but for anyone who wants to expand their human potential.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine or writing at specific times?
When I was working on Love Child and A Stolen Summer, I set myself the task of writing every day, for at least half an hour. That doesn't sound like much, but it adds up. Basically, you have to show up.
One of my top tips for stopping yourself trying to write well is to use a 10-minute timer. I generated all the material for Love Child in 10-minute bursts, just setting the timer again and again. I usually worked for about 2 hours a day in the coffee shop, until my energy flagged. I found the background hum of activity in a coffee shop helped distract the part of my mind that would otherwise fill the silence with anxiety and doubt.
The nice thing about 10 minutes is that it's not long enough to worry about what you should write; you just have to get on with it. If things are going well when the timer pings, you can carry on; and if they aren't, you can breathe a sigh of relief that you don't have to keep at that scene and you can jump somewhere else.
Now, my writing practice is the Imaginative Storm Writing Prompt of the Week on Zoom, every Saturday and Thursday. It's free and it's open to anyone who wants to join us and see what their imagination will pop out. It's a community activity, it lasts an hour, and the actual writing part is just 10 minutes.
I wrote a piece about how lucky I feel to have two fathers (published in Harper's Bazaar UK as "Daddies' Girl"). After that, three people urged me to write a memoir, and though to begin with I thought I'd said everything I had to say in 1500 words, the idea simmered. I had thought of writing something about "going in search of my mother"—who was widely loved, and whom I didn't know. So, the two ideas coalesced and I began work on what would become Love Child.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities do you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
Walking is very supportive of writing. I walked for 45 minutes in the park every day before heading to the coffee shop to work on Love Child, and I often find myself pacing up and down at home. My creative collaborator James Navé walks and dictates. My novelist friend Kate Christensen does the same.
I'd say that my major creative pursuit, other than writing, is my house. I designed it, and my son's father and I built it (with help). I love improving the interior decoration, and I do my best with landscaping.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I'm working on Write What You Don't Know for Memoir, and I hope to publish it in 2025. I'm exploring the concept of imaginative intelligence in my Substack pieces, and that may become a book also.
Enjoyed reading this very much, as I do with all your words. Had no idea that all the London publishers turned down your proposal for the beautiful memoir 'Love Child'. What on earth is wrong with them?! Baffling as it is, that certainly gives me hope and encouragement!
Thanks — enjoyed this very much. Just to point out that the link to Allegra Huston’s Substack (which I’m eager to check out) seems to lead to a different publication, with no posts as yet.