Memoir: Where Shakespeare meets Remote
It’s not the first time it’s happened, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
Back in 2011, I started a little project with a group of friends. I named the group, “The Spanglish Project” and the project, “The A to Z of Spanish Culture.”
The idea was to use each letter of the alphabet as the springboard to talk about one topic of Spanish culture, mainly those least talked about (so no toros nor flamenco). Each of my friends, all bilingual and with some experience of living in both the UK and Spain, would contribute their thoughts and words towards each chapter.
As with most collaborative projects, this one fell apart, but I picked up the pieces.
There was enough material to get me curious about what would emerge. (I’m beginning to think this is the main driver behind many of my books, which is why they’re such a commercial success - not!) So I took it upon myself to finish the book, which I’d started because I thought it might go down well with the many UK people interested in Spain (for once, I was right!).
The book was never meant to be a heavy tome, or an in-depth look into Spain’s history, its people and norms. But it was only when I decided that it would be part memoir/part textbook that I started to enjoy it. I only talked about things that interested me, and from my own point of view, although I did research those aspects that would provide readers with a more instructive read and not just one full of anecdotes and opinions. While readers might be interested in the fact that my grandmother made the best croquetas in the world, I thought they’d also welcome understanding topics I had no experience of, like the rise in immigration over the last 20 years.
In the end, I even touched on “toros and flamenco”. One of the few people I trusted with my first draft, Simon Dunmore, mentioned that,while he understood I wanted to stay away from clichés, it was very strange to read a book about Spanish culture that didn’t mention those two exports.
“But I talk about paella and tortilla, that should be enough!”
In any case, he had a point, and so, as I often did, I followed his advice. (Thank you, Simon, wherever your soul has landed.)
Unexpectedly, the A to Z is my best selling book, and has the largest number of reviews. I read these recently, and smiled. Its brevity, and its personal informal nature struck a chord. One unexpected outcome was that the book became a set text for some academic courses, including a course on Spanish culture in a university! Those were the days, when you could release a book out into the world, post a few tweets about it and it had a chance of flying out into reader’s hands.
The book is still pretty much how it was when I first read it, and unfortunately, it’s out of date - something which the decreasing average star ratings reflect. A few years ago, I asked my mother and my friend Paul Read to add a few chapters on the emerging political situation, and I updated some of the text myself. The book could do with another update, but personally I have nothing else to say about my childhood years and my connection to Spain.
That’s all ok. But the reason I’m telling you all this (and this is what happens when you blog without an outline) is that I’ve hit memoir-lane again, also unexpectedly.
Enter the bots
Some of you will know that when I first started playing with generative AI more than a year ago, I had fun prompting the bots to write poetry.
Then, in a flash of inspiration (or was it procrastination?) I asked it to adapt “To Be or Not to Be” into “To Work from Home or not to Work from Home”.
The speech amused me, surprised me and impressed me, so I fed it some more speeches to adapt around other remote work themes. Sometimes I even asked me to recommend suitable speeches - which is when I realised who inaccurate the bots could be. If they got wrong the source of Shakespeare quotes and monologues, what else were they making up?
I played with this for a bit and decided to start a project, called Remotely Shakespeare. I even trademarked the name. Imagine all the great things you can do under that brand - mainly merchandise and oh-so-many silly posts on social media. But could I turn the idea into a book?
Following a similar process to how I wrote the A to Z, I started creating chapters for a book on remote work, inspired by the adapted Shakespeare monologues and scenes. I asked ChatGPT to write blog posts on the themes I had identified, but everything that came out was… pedestrian and uninteresting. The material it had been trained on consisted mainly of internet texts that had been written after lockdown - the version of remote work that had little to do with the wonderful world of remote work I knew and loved.
In any case, I pulled out one of the chapters, shared it with some friends (and my mum) and got a range of replies. From: this is such a good idea, to this idea is rubbish, to the reaction all writers fear: mah.
But, following my gut (or maybe I’m just stubborn), I continued working on the project. I kept talking about it and getting chuckles of amusement every time I mentioned “Is this a zoom link which I see before me” and the like. And I have to say, that the encouragement from both my husband and my friend Pinar (yes, lots of fun when we used to deliver training together as Pilar and Pinar) stopped me from ditching the thing.
Memoir-esque non-fiction
It was as I was writing the last chapter, based o Prospero’s last speech, that I realised this was a way for me to wrap up my connection with the world of remote work. I’d done this before. “Hi I’m Here for a Recording” was a way of wrapping up what had been until then a very successful voiceover career, but which I could see was beginning to fade away. I was getting the same feeling with this “Shakespeare book”, which is how I refer to it.
Now I had a project that had, through my love of Shakespeare, rekindled my interest in writing about remote work. I had no interest in writing a how-to book, (never have) but then, what was the point of this beast? The draft lingered in Scrivener in my computer for many months, waiting for me to make up my mind: write it or dump it.
Then I remembered how much fun I’d had with the A to Z, picking a topic and giving my own take on it.
It was only when I decided this new book should be another memoir, that I was able to come back to the draft and make sense of it. It helped me choose some Shakespeare speeches over others and nail down the 12 chapters, one for each month - there’s will be a calendar coming.
I’m still finding it hard to write though.
Now that I’m coming at it from a memoir point of view, I get verbal diarrhoea when I start writing.
My words spiral out of control and the chapters become never ending.
Enter the bots, again
Claude AI has been useful in helping me structure my thoughts, and consolidating the idea of the Shakespeare-driven-memoir-about-remote-work. It’s encouraged me to the Shakespeare texts more a key feature than a “clever idea”, and has given me ideas on how to do that. While this makes the writing even more challenging, it has also given me license to go into discovery mode, and even to draw from my own experience with Shakespeare as performer. Event thought my adventures with Shakespeare have not been many, it will be fun to write about them too.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to pick books to read that will help me with this. Unstuck by Rachel Herron has served as inspiration stylistically She’s a great writer though, I need to bear that in mind, and her memoir is so beautifully crafted it reads like a story. And because I have followed her through her podcast for so long, I can also see how many aspects of her life she’s missed out from the text, in order to focus only on the memoir’s theme, moving countries to build a new life and get unstuck. The book works, without her mentioning every single anecdote she can remember. This is a great reminder for me.
I’ve also started reading “The Quality of Mercy”, a book by Peter Brook’s about his experience of Shakespeare. Most people studying acting in the UK, and even abroad, will have heard of Peter Brook, the theatre director who left the UK for France to continue his exploration of theatre there. For me, he will always be the crazy guy who took his troupe of actors to tour African villages with only a big rug as their stage (which I read about in The Conference of Birds). I have all his books on theatre, have read all of them and have them neatly lined on my bookcase to remind me of the great things that can be done in the name of art.
And then there’s this blog
I’m really enjoying this space.
I know most of you reading personally, you’re a small crowd, and maybe that’s why I feel free tp go wherever my words take me. It’s here that I’m developing a non-fiction style, letting my thoughts emerge as I write, not knowing quite where they’ll take me, but knowing when I’m likely done.
And that moment is now.
Thank you so much for reading. I’ll keep you posted on where my Remotely Shakespeare adventure takes me. Meanwhile, enjoy your own adventures, however tiny or wide they may be.
By the way…
You will have noticed that the image that goes with this post was AI generated. In creating it, I found out that you can edit the images now. Very impressive. I will share the process in next week’s post, so make sure to subscribe below, if you ‘re not subscribed already.