‘I was terrified just before it was released’ – Anne Pinkerton @AAPinkerton on writing a grief memoir

Publishing a memoir can be a very exposing experience. Or it can be a relief. Maybe both. Anne Pinkerton certainly knows this – she’s just released Were You Close? A sister’s quest to know the brother she lost. I began by asking what that was like, to know that strangers are exploring your life and your feelings in such detail.

I was terrified just before it was released. Though I’d worked on it for years and published excerpts to positive responses, near the end, I had an anticipation of deep regret for my vulnerability. Internally, I was saying things like, ‘I wanted this, and now it’s been set in motion, and I can’t turn back, oh my God’. I feared a lot of reactions that haven’t come to fruition.

So far, it’s been incredibly relieving and rewarding. Many readers have noted that the honesty really resonates for them, so I feel it was the right choice to pour myself out on the page.

It’s always a little risky when you write about your own life, and I naturally tend to be a very open person and writer — perhaps a little too open for some family members — but I am what I am, and challenging personal topics are the ones that draw me in. I don’t know how to write any other way than to listen to what is asking to be written and heed the call.

How did you decide when to end the memoir? Especially as life carries on anyway, and so does your adjustment to the events.

The narrative ended up inside the ‘container’ of an exact decade, from the day my brother went missing on the mountain to the day in 2018 when my then-husband and I travelled to Colorado to scatter ashes there on the tenth anniversary of his death. That felt like a suitable end point, despite the realization that, when you write about your own experiences, those stories live inside you for ever, so memoirists just have to decide when it makes sense to wrap things up.

How did you arrive at a structure?

There were still a number of structural things that had to be decided upon within that container. I spent a long time trying to make sure events were organized in a way that guided the reader properly. They roll out in a mostly linear way, but not entirely, especially at the beginning, which I felt made sense in terms of mirroring how chaotic life was in the immediate aftermath of the inciting event, a sudden death.

Then my wonderful developmental editor, Alexis Paige at Vine Leaves Press, helped refine the beginning of the book so that a bit more suspense is held. And we decided to switch the tense from past to present at the end, when the final events occur, to give a more immediate feel.

Were You Close? was a semi-finalist for the River Teeth Book Prize in 2019, but has only recently been published.

It turns out that the pandemic wasn’t the best time to search for agents or pitch a book. Especially as a first-time author with a grief memoir.  

I only had a couple of months of sending queries under my belt when the world shut down. Agents and publishers were affected like every other industry, and were terrified of losing money, understandably. Most people weren’t thrilled about trying to move a deathy story when so many people were dying. I received many letters telling me that my writing was strong and the story was compelling, but that they couldn’t sell a book about loss right then.

I’m glad I finally gave up on trying to obtain an agent and started trying to place the book myself with independent presses. When I read the notes from Melanie Faith, the acquisitions editor who accepted my manuscript at Vine Leaves Press, I knew I had found the right publishing home, at last. 

Why did you choose that title? Were there any others you considered?

The working title was Losing Icarus. When David scaled three Colorado 14ers in one day before his fatal fall, I couldn’t stop thinking about the mythological character who flew too high to the sun and subsequently fell into the sea; it just squared with my sense that David had been overly confident and paid for it with his life. But, after having multiple conversations about his extreme preparedness and lack of arrogance, I scaled back this element to one chapter in the book named ‘Icarus’.

My brilliant MFA professor, the author Kate Whouley, read my introductory chapter titled ‘Were You Close?’ and said ‘That would be a great book title’. The issue of what it means to be close to someone, whether that matters in terms of acknowledgement of grief, and the inane things people say in response to a death ended up being throughlines, so that title — which stuck about half-way through the process — just worked. 

I agree. The title works on so many levels.

On your website it’s clear that David’s absence is still very much with you. You’ve had essays published in Modern Loss, Hippocampus Magazine, The Bark, and the anthology The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink. A lot of your writing – as well as the memoir – is about loss, illness, grief, and coping. Do you think you’d have been a writer at all if not for this tragedy?

I feel like I’ve always been a writer. I studied poetry writing in high school and as an undergrad in college. Then, to pay the bills, I pivoted to writing editorial, public relations and advertising copy for a living.

I missed my personal work for years, but had a hard time figuring out how to re-engage. David’s death sent me back in that direction. Though the event itself was horrible, the positive outcome was re-embracing my authentic writer self. Losing someone dear to you, suddenly, when they are in the prime of their life is a pretty intense wake-up call. It’s palpable proof that life is fragile and uncertain and that anything can happen at any time. It was then I realized that I might not have forever to do what I wanted to do, which is write. So, I used the experience of my brother’s death to do just that. It sounds dramatic, but it was almost like meeting my true self again.

And I’ve found it clarifying and therapeutic to write through other difficult events in my life, like friends’ deaths from cancer and suicide. Now I’m working on pieces related to my own divorce, another kind of disruptive loss. I’ve embraced the idea Abigail Thomas so perfectly described as bringing your dark things out of the basement and into the light; that, by dealing with the stuff we tend to hide — that pains us, that shames us — we gain clarity and control, and the experience no longer has the same power over us. Sometimes, it’s as simple as saying I’ve learned to love talking about the things we don’t talk about.

You have an MFA in creative non-fiction. What made you take the course?

Going to grad school at 41 was never part of any plan. But when I realized how much I wanted to write this book, I also knew I could use more education in writing narrative prose and more structure to keep me on track.

What did you gain from it?

I had no excuse not to make my own work a priority. It takes discipline and some sacrifices, and I still wobble on my commitments to myself from time to time, but that experience taught me how to make my writing more than a once-in-a-while hobby.

What else changed?

My professors gave me the tools to effectively craft my stories, a better understanding of what readers need to stay engaged, and a broader understanding of what good memoir is and what it can do. I never saw myself as an essayist before the program, and I can’t imagine not identifying that way now. I also learned a tonne about the publishing industry in my MFA, which has been incredibly helpful.    

Which authors and other books helped you find the way to write Were You Close?

I owe many authors a deep debt of gratitude for the companionship of their books on this long journey. Reading was a primary form of research, though I didn’t call it that at the time. I just let my curiosity take me where it wanted to.

The first book that really mattered to me was The Empty Room by Elizabeth Devita-Raeburn. It was the only story about sibling loss that I could even find at first, and I was so grateful. She was also a sister writing about losing her brother, as well as exploring what it means to be a bereft sibling through interviews with others.

Then I came across TJ Wray’s Surviving the Death of a Sibling — part memoir, part self-help, part academic —one of few books that addresses the loss of a brother or sister in adulthood. Wray discusses the phenomenon of ‘disenfranchised grief’, explaining the way American culture treats sibling deaths as less significant than other familial losses.

These two books alone taught me so much about my own experience, made me feel much less alone, and provided invaluable context for my own writing. They also gave me the sense that my book could be an important contribution, as the literature about this extremely common phenomenon is still scarce.

Other sibling loss memoirs that impacted me as I wrote Were You Close? included Invisible Sisters by Jessica Handler, Barefoot to Avalon by David Payne, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford, Name All the Animals by Alison Smith, The Guinness Book of Me by Steven Church, History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky, Tragedy + Time by Adam Cayton-Holland, and The Blessing by Gregory Orr.

I had never heard of these. What a fascinating reading list. Thank you.

I was also ravenous for stories about athletes and adventurers. There were many books that informed my understanding of risk-taking, the desire for exploration and conquest, and what it’s like to brave the elements in search of personal achievement.

I read a lot about that for Ever Rest. I wanted to understand the natures of the people who feel most alive when they are on the brink. Which were your own favourites?

Just a few highlights are Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane, Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, Addicted to Danger by Jim Wickwire and Dorothy Bullitt, every story I could get my hands on by former Outside Magazine writer Mark Jenkins, and Colorado 14er Disasters by Mark Scott-Nash, which contains a chapter about my brother’s accident.

Heavens. From my own research in this subject I know there are events and people who pass into legend. And it’s a small world. There were some stories I came across several times, as if everyone was building the same uber-jigsaw about human endeavour and daring. Now your book is part of this jigsaw.

Speaking of which, do you have another book in you?

I absolutely do. Hopefully, more than one. Another memoir is under way, and I’ve started putting together a collection of poetry. Because once I re-opened the door to writing for myself, the verse came back too.

Would you ever write fiction?

It’s hard for me to imagine, but if you told me I’d write a memoir before my brother died, I wouldn’t have believed it. I admire the hell out of people who can create stories and characters out of thin air that are believable and resonant. But I don’t even read much fiction, so it honestly isn’t too likely that I’ll end up on that path.

On your Facebook profile I see you attended a high school for performing and visual arts.

It was such an amazing school. I tell people it was like the movie Fame, and it sounds absurd, but it really was. There were auditions to get in, rehearsals until late at night, performances for the rest of the students at lunch, dancing and singing on the tables. Art openings, welding in the courtyard, kids with paint-spattered clothes. Old-school photography darkrooms, choral songs floating through the hallways, jazz concerts on Friday nights. Creativity out the wazoo. And drama. So much drama. It was a really meaningful formative time, and I feel extremely lucky to have attended.

What did you major in? I am envious, by the way.

As aforementioned, that’s where I first studied poetry writing. I also studied theatre and studio art, the latter of which became my ‘art area’, as we called it, my main concentration. I was big into printmaking — etching primarily — which I continued in college, but, alas, have not returned to. Maybe one day?

You work in marketing communications. Has that been any help in promoting your book – and in all those kinds of necessary promotional interactions that writers can find uncomfortable?

Yes, absolutely. And… I still have a lot to learn. Book marketing isn’t the same as any other kind of promotion, but the tools and skills I’ve used for years are certainly serving me. Doing things like building and updating a website, posting content to social media, penning press releases and sending newsletters is natural for me. Finding reviewers, trying to land readings, joining book fairs, entering contests and the like are entirely foreign, but I’m working on it.

The hardest part is that I’m accustomed to making other people and organizations shine; it’s not so natural to be honing my own ‘brand’. It makes me feel obnoxious sometimes, and a bit weird, to be the one in the spotlight.

Find Anne’s various spotlights on Facebook, Twitter as @AAPinkerton, and her website. Find Were You Close? here.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.