Based on a true story

Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

Currently: drinking tea in my dressing gown

Reading: Nearly All The Men In Lagos Are Mad by Damilare Kuku

Watching: Just finished re-watching Daria and emotionally, it was what I needed in this season

Listening: ‘Imithandazo’ by Kabza De Small & Mthunzi feat. Young Stunna, DJ Maphorisa, Sizwe Alakine & UmthakathiKush

Thinking: about the amazing IWD campaign we just launched at Black Ballad

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“Is your novel based on your life?”

I smile, take a breath and steady myself. I resist every instinct within to conspicuously roll my eyes and sigh. I’ve only had one book published but I’ve been asked this question so many times, the will to deliver a polite, trite answer is requiring more and more effort. 

I answer, “No, not my life, but the story is rooted in very real experiences.”

But here’s what I want to say:

“Do you ask all novelists this or just the female ones?”

“Believe it or not, I am quite talented enough to write a rich and engaging story without mining my real life for titillating details to get white middle class audiences clutching their pearls and licking their lips.”

“Yes, despite what my biography says I was in fact really born and raised in South London and went to live in LA for a bit before returning to the UK when my dad died.”

Maybe I’m a bit too defensive; maybe I’m reading entirely too much into a question from someone who is genuinely curious; maybe the real people deserving of such an acerbic response is the publishing industry, which happily rode the wave of debut “autofiction” (autobiographical fiction) by women, in particular, setting the kind of expectation in readers that the only fiction worth reading is a compilation of thinly veiled diary entries by young, attractive literary ingénues.

I write all of the above knowing that I risk alienating you, who might be thinking, “Boo-hoo-hoo…give me a break! Do you know how many people would give their grandmother’s left little finger to be in your position?!” And intellectually, I do.

I should be so grateful that the ivory gates of the British publishing industry allowed me in that I should tolerate minor offences. But I’ve written before (here and here) about the ways that this whole process effs with you, so here we are, you wanted some real life jist? This is mine!

But on another note, do you really think that I – the person who won’t publicly reveal the results of her MBTI personality test lest her enemies use such information against her – would lay herself bare through autofiction?!

I’ve kept a diary since I was a teenager, and while I still have most of those volumes of secrets, even the thought of re-reading them in the privacy of my bedroom under the duvet with a torch makes me cringe so hard I want to vomit. Writing earnestly about anything resembling my life in long form for other people to read might make me spontaneously combust.

But I’ve been thinking about all of this again as I’m mentally preparing myself for promoting my second novel. The cover and title reveal dropped at the start of this month, and so did the nerves. I’d like to believe that all my books are equally special but this book is the story before the story – an idea that had been planted long before my first novel, Hope & Glory, but a story that I wasn’t ready to tell, emotionally and practically, until now.

It’s a story that is particularly close to my heart, with characters that I’ve been very literally living with for years. I’m pretty thin-skinned at the best of times, but in this case, the thought of mildly annoying questions feels like a cheese grater across my tongue. For everyone’s sake, I hope I get over this sooner rather than later. 

“Is it based on your life?”

I guess a more generous interpretation of this question would be something about truth and the desire to understand where this narrative sits in relation to reality. So if we assume that is the question being implied, then the answer is, “This book may be fiction, but yes, it’s all true.”

Every book I write is written to be true. I feel like it’s easier to write truth when you’re writing fiction, and you know what, maybe when you get down to it, every book is about me in some way. I’m taking a truth from my life, something I’ve experienced or something I’ve witnessed, and spinning a whole world around it. A world that gets truer as it becomes more elaborate and complex.

“Would you ever write a memoir?” is another question that I’ve been asked, and while my official motto is “never say never”, my immediate reaction is hell no. That’s what the diaries are for. But also, I care too much what other people think of me, Jeni, the person, to write with the kind of fearless honesty that all good memoirs require.

But, once again, there is enough of me submerged beneath the layers of plot, subplot and dialogue in my novels for me to get that same cathartic release. I’m so very present but completely unobservable. An 80,000+ word invisibility cloak. 

And if I allow this shot of self awareness to really run its course, maybe that’s why I’m feeling preemptively spikey about annoying questions that might crop up with this upcoming book. Maybe there is more of me in All That We’ve Got than I’m allowing myself to fully acknowledge.

But as for which elements are “real” and which elements are just true. Well… that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

(You can pre-order All That We’ve Got right now!)