The Martlet

Some stories pour from us in a surge of inspiration. Others gestate for years at a time. The latter was the case for “Hoarding,” the essay that recently won Ontario writer and editor Anne Marie Todkill the Malahat Review’s 2011 Constance Rooke Non-fiction prize, an annual award for literary non-fiction between 2 000 and 3 000 words. Todkill’s braided essay focuses on her relationship with her disabled older brother and bounces between her childhood and present day — a lifetime in retrospect.

“I’ve been pondering my brother’s way of being in the world for as long as I can remember,” Todkill wrote in an email interview. “I typically work on things for ages — as in years. I suspect that in this case there was more than one starting point, more than one piece, and that eventually I understood what connected them — at least for me.”

Oxymoronic at a glance, creative non-fiction views reality through the various lenses of a fiction writer: voice, tense, tone and often non-linear narration. Now picture each lens as less of a watch-glass and more of a prism — in the final product, lines may shift, blur or disappear altogether. The details emphasized in one author’s retelling might not be emphasized in another’s. Ethics come into question. What happens when you tell the story of someone other than yourself? What happens when that person is unable to give permission to share a story he could never share on his own?

“One needs to consider whether one is writing with respect and out of love, or for some destructive motive,” wrote Todkill when asked how she justifies the encroachment on her brother’s life. She emphasizes that this piece is not her brother’s whole story, but a collection of isolated musings.

“I’m sure it reveals more about me than about its ostensible subject.”

Todkill writes in four genres — non-fiction, fiction, stage script and poetry (she recently won Arc Magazine’s poem of the year award). She believes this issue extends into the realm of fiction as well because “different people draw the line in different places when they draw characters from life.” When asked how she chooses the most effective genre to convey a certain story, Todkill wrote that the choice is apparent from the get-go. “I’m not sure there’s a difference in my approach so much as a difference in the way the nugget of an idea or a character or a voice arrives in my head. Sometimes you can shift a piece from, say, prose to poetry, or from non-fiction to fiction, but for me the form is usually inherent in the originating thought for the work.”

Todkill works as a medical editor, and although “Hoarding” is devoid of the clinical jargon, passives and other sterilities endemic to science writing, it is conscious of the nature of clinical analysis. One thread explores the origins of her brother’s behaviour, although Todkill leaves out any concrete diagnosis.

“Do we opt for a mechanistic explanation? A psychoanalytic one?” she pondered. “And, if both of these are unsatisfactory, what then?”

With a successful year behind her, Todkill’s goals remain modest and practical.

“I think the only kind of goal-setting I can engage in as a writer would concern things like carving out more time to write, or trying to finish another draft of something within a certain period,” she wrote.

Due dates are essential in the final stages of the writing process — particularly when the story is as deep-seeded and ever-evolving as “Hoarding.”

“I think contest deadlines perform a kind of psychological service for writers who find it difficult to either finish or let go of a piece. Even if it doesn’t make the cut, at least the manuscript is off your desk for a while!”