The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #120: Andrea J. Buchanan
"Part of what I learned about how to write the book was to be curious about its challenges, and, rather than fight them, use them as part of the writing process."
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 120th installment, featuring Andrea J. Buchanan, author of many books, including the memoir The Beginning of Everything: The Year I Lost My Mind and Found Myself. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Andrea J. Buchanan is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book is the novel FIVE-PART INVENTION. Her memoir THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, about her experience with spinal CSF leak, was a finalist for the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. In 2020, her essay "Two Hearts," published by The Kenyon Review, was named a "Notable" essay in Best American Essays 2020. Her other work includes the multimedia young adult novel GIFT, named one of Kirkus Review's best books of 2012; the internationally bestselling THE DARING BOOK FOR GIRLS; her essay collection on early motherhood MOTHER SHOCK: LOVING EVERY (OTHER) MINUTE OF IT; and seven other books. Before becoming a writer, Andi trained as a pianist, earning a bachelor of music degree in piano performance from the Boston Conservatory of Music and a master's in piano performance from the San Francisco Conservatory. Her last recital was at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 53, and I have been writing for as long as I can remember. Most of that writing was “secret” writing, meant only for myself. But my first book was published in 2003.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
My most recent book is FIVE-PART INVENTION, a novel published in 2022. But my memoir, THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, which I’ll talk about here, was published in 2018.
What number book is this for you?
Those two are books 11 and 12.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
I categorize THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING as a memoir. There are certainly moments in the book that stand alone as essays. But overall the book had a particular timeline to it, a narrative arc and urgency, that made it feel more like a memoir. Beth Kephart recently shared a wonderful way of defining memoir. She said, “Every memoir, to be a memoir, must be bigger than the memoirist. Every memoir, to be a memoir, must investigate the broader world.” This was precisely what I wrestled with in THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING: the telling of a story that was, somehow, larger than my singular experience, and relevant to more than just my own personal healing and recovery process.
In many ways, writing about the experience of my spinal leak was like experiencing it consciously for the first time, as when I was actually leaking, my brain fog and neurological issues protected me in some ways from fully experiencing the emotional reality of it all.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
“What if you coughed one day and everything changed? In THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, writer Andrea J. Buchanan shares her journey into a strange new world, when a coughing fit tears the tough membrane around her brain and spinal cord, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to continuously seep out and prompting a neurological disorder that confounds the doctors she sees. Battling divorce, cognitive impairment, disassociation, and relentless head pain, she feels trapped inside her brain, and less and less like herself as the leak continues. In some folklore, cerebrospinal fluid is where consciousness and the soul reside. In THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING, Andrea seeks to understand: Where was ‘I’ when ‘I’ wasn’t there?”
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?
When my younger daughter was maybe 6 or 7, she explained a joke to me once by telling me that what made it funny was that it meant two things at the same time. That kind of multiplicity of meaning is what makes something a story as well, I think, or at least draws me to a subject as something to write about.
I think for me, writing has always been a tool for metabolizing or otherwise coming to understand what I’ve experienced. It’s also been a process of curiosity, interrogation, and exploration, and, when writing for publication, working within specific forms to create something larger than just answers to my own personal questions. When I experienced my spinal CSF leak, with its strange dissociative component that made me question where the sense of self resides when the brain and mind seem to be operating independent of one another, I knew I would need to write about it, once I was able to.
As I was recovering from my leak, I was invited to participate in The Rumpus’s “Letters in the Mail” program, a subscription service where readers receive actual mailed letters (typed, handwritten, whatever) from various authors a few times a month. My brain was still fragile, but the idea of writing about my experience in the format of a letter to a friend seemed doable, and so it ended up that my first real post-leak writing was a “Letters in the Mail” experiment. That letter I wrote went on to form part of the introduction in my book proposal a few months later, and was eventually incorporated into the final book itself.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
By far the most difficult parts of writing THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING were the neurological and emotional aspects. With a brain injury, it was a challenge to hold too many thoughts in my head at once, or to think about complicated things, or even to edit my own work. Some days I might have an idea or concept in my head and be very sure about how to write it—and then I’d open my laptop and my brain would shut down for the day just from my looking at the screen. In addition, there was the fact that in many ways, writing about the experience of my spinal leak was like experiencing it consciously for the first time, as when I was actually leaking, my brain fog and neurological issues protected me in some ways from fully experiencing the emotional reality of it all.
I remember telling my therapist, I don’t understand, this book is so difficult to write! I usually write so fast, and now I’m stuck, and if I was this stuck in any other book, I’d know that it was time to put it aside, or stop writing it because it was the wrong project, but I can’t, because I’m on a deadline and I have to finish it. But it’s like a part of me doesn’t want to, and I don’t know why! And she looked at me so patiently and said, So you’re telling me that writing about this traumatic experience may, in itself, be traumatizing? Which: of course. Absolutely. It made so much sense when she said it. So I had to approach it differently—I had to learn how to write the book through what it was teaching me as I tried to write it, which was to go slowly, in small bites, and to take breaks, and to not expect a certain number of words accomplished on a certain number of days, and to stop when things were difficult, not because I was giving up but because I needed to take care of myself in the midst of difficulty.
Part of what I learned about how to write the book was to be curious about its challenges, and, rather than fight them, use them as part of the writing process. For instance, when I was affected most by my leak and my brain struggled to make sense of things, I felt so fragmented. I experienced time passing as discrete, unconnected moments—I was just here, and then here, and then here, and then here. And so I thought, What if I wrote like that?
I used a wall in my bedroom to create a physical version of this idea, like a Post-It Note version of one of those conspiracy theory boards with pushpins and red string. On a giant-sized Post-It Note, I’d write one big-idea concept word, like “Self,” and then I’d surround it with smaller Post-It Notes where I’d write smaller ideas or phrases that touched on the sense of self I had when I was sick vs. when I was well. On another giant Post-It Note, I’d write “Illness,” surrounded by a constellation of smaller Post-It Notes relating to my thoughts on that, and so on. Then, once I had all my Big Idea and Small Idea sticky notes on the wall, I would end up picking a point, zooming in, and writing about that, and then picking another point, zooming in, and writing about that. It felt very fitting to me to create this kind of process for tackling the book, because when I was sick, I couldn’t see a big picture, only dots that I couldn’t connect.
This was a concrete way for me to work, in the beginning, to literally see what I was dealing with. Just defining the dots and writing about them. Later, when I was deeper into the process, and deeper into my recovery, I was able to think more specifically about narrative, and what connecting these dots might actually look like in terms of storytelling.
Even so, it was such a hard process the entire way through. There was never a moment when I thought, “This is going great! It’s exactly what I want it to be!” But I learned to respect that that was the nature of this book: that it would be difficult, that I would have to be both gentle and creative about how I went about writing it, and that that was okay.
In terms of getting the book published, when we sent out the initial proposal, there were one or two places that had interest but worried I might be still too close to the events to have a broad enough perspective. Luckily for me, Pegasus saw the book’s potential and ended up shepherding it all the way through to a PEN nomination for excellence in literary science writing.
I had to learn how to write the book through what it was teaching me as I tried to write it, which was to go slowly, in small bites, and to take breaks, and to not expect a certain number of words accomplished on a certain number of days, and to stop when things were difficult, not because I was giving up but because I needed to take care of myself in the midst of difficulty.
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 used real names throughout the book. I did check in with the medical professionals whose academic publications I quoted, just to make sure they were okay with it. The people I was most concerned about, in terms of writing about them, were my children. We were all in the midst of this new, tentative recovery process when I was working on the manuscript, and I worried that my conceptualization of the experience might contradict theirs, or undermine theirs, or override theirs. I also didn’t want to tell their story for them or share more than they wanted to have shared about their experience. So I checked in with both of them often, talking through some of the things I was planning to write, getting their perspectives, asking their permissions.
One interesting thing that came up in terms of changed names was that my younger child came out as trans just as the hardcover book was published. Once she decided on her new name, I was able to work with my publisher to update her name and gender throughout the manuscript, which was reflected in the digital edition right away, and in the paperback when it came out a few months later.
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.)
I often avoid reading while I’m writing, but this project was so daunting for me that I took a lot of breaks and tried to read other memoirs about strange and sudden illness, to kind of reverse-engineer how those authors did it. The book I remember loving the most at that time was Sarah Manguso’s THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY. It was such a poetic, profound, and compelling book, and I loved the way she was able to write about illness without falling into cliché. I also loved the interesting form it took, which also subverted expectations about illness memoir.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
You know, I always say that the book you’re writing teaches you how to write it. What that means practically is that the process for each book is always different—at least for me. Some books need time away from writing, with lots of mulling and pondering and imagining and questioning before sitting down to write; some books need butt-in-chair discipline, daily writing time, and strict scheduling, no daydreaming allowed. Some books unspool themselves quickly and others need patient coaxing. So whatever your current process looks like, I would be curious about it: interrogate it, rather than fall into despair or intimidation. What does this book need? Is there a reason you might be fearful, or stuck, or reluctant? Or motivated or joyous or energized or whatever the process is making you feel? Is your current process protecting you from feeling those things, or engaging with those things? Sometimes the answer truly is that the project needs to be put aside for a bit while you work on something else. But sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding the project’s inherent “personality” and purpose. And in that case, I would try to be patient with the process and keep going.
What do you love about writing?
Discovering connections between ideas or topics or events that I hadn’t fully understood before writing about them.
When my younger daughter was maybe 6 or 7, she explained a joke to me once by telling me that what made it funny was that it meant two things at the same time. That kind of multiplicity of meaning is what makes something a story as well, I think, or at least draws me to a subject as something to write about.
What frustrates you about writing?
That I can’t just download my brain, where an idea or story can seem perfect and make perfect sense (because it hasn’t been interrogated), instead of having to translate my brain into writing, a process that by its very nature changes the original idea or story (because I am interrogating it).
What about writing surprises you?
Where it ends up. Sometimes you can have that perfect idea in your head, and then as you begin to write it, it becomes amorphous and maybe gets away from you a little—but if you follow it, sometimes you get to the end and discover it’s exactly where you wanted it to be in that “perfect” version, even though you didn’t get there the way you thought you might. Other times, it turns out as you write your way through, you discover that “perfect” idea in your head is actually flawed, or flimsy, or shallow, and you end up writing your way into something far more robust and interesting.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
No—it almost never has, since I have kids. Writing as a mother with young children meant learning how to take any opportunity to write, snatching time for quick scribbling or typing when and where I could, no muse required. My kids are grown now, but I don’t think I ever got out of the habit of just trying to get words down at whatever random moment I had to myself. However, when I’m on an actual deadline, I’m a lot more disciplined and aim to write every day, hit a specific word count, and make meaningful progress.
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?
One of my best writer friends and I always joke that anything we do—whether it be household chores, doomscrolling, binge-watching, lying in bed in the dark staring at the ceiling—is truly just pre-writing. It all counts!
But I do have a handful of other creative things I love to do. Playing the piano, of course, though it’s taken a long time to be able to do it “for fun” instead of listening with a critical ear or despairing at my lax, out-of-practice technique. And fiber arts. I’ve been hand-knitting for years, and recently got into machine knitting, which is fantastic fun. It scratches the same kind of problem-solving plus creativity itch that writing does. I have a couple of machines I use for different projects, and I really love working on intarsia designs (basically, knitting a picture out of yarn).
This year I’ve been quite ill—not with a spinal CSF leak, but other stuff kind of downstream of that—and I haven’t been able to knit, either on the machine or by hand. But I started picking up crochet again, which I learned as a kid but hadn’t done since then, and it’s really soothing in a ruminative sort of way that reminds me of both playing piano and thinking about writing. When I know the pattern and my fingers can just go, I can spin up thoughts underneath all that and think about story or plot or just ideas in general. It’s been very satisfying to do while stuck in bed.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I’ve been mulling something for a while now that has been slowly taking shape in my mind, and I only just recently started actually writing it down after pondering it wordlessly for more than six months—a process I’ve never used with any of my other books. I don’t know for sure if it will result in a novel, but for now I’m just trying to trust the process and allow myself to learn how this book wants to be written.
loved this. I really enjoy reading the author questionnaire series. It brings out such different perspectives!
Thank you for this warm and enlightening piece. I needed reminding to trust the process and I got it here.