A Note on the Process
Trying to write a life story turned out to be a
much more difficult process than I'd originally imagined. Because we began
the course reading life stories written by other people, I was under the
impression that interviews were less of an interaction between two people and
more of an ongoing monologue, easily adaptable into a body of text.
The truth is,
the influence of the interviewer in the life story is undeniable. While
the recurring themes in Shelly's narrative are her own, unbiased by my
admittedly general questions, the topics are my own. The more detailed
aspects of her story are more detailed because I asked about them again in the
second interview; I deliberately went after the topics that interested me,
personally, the most, like her relationship with her Uncle Ed.
Then, in the
editing process, my influence again exerted itself. I tried my hardest to
maintain the original spirit--and voice--of the interviews, but I'll admit to
significantly altering the body of the narrative in order to fully omit the
presence of my questions. I included excerpts from the transcripts of both
interviews to show exactly how the interviews progressed, but I wanted the life
story to be Shelly's own, without obvious interjections from me. So the
flow of ideas, in most cases, is not as spontaneous as it appears.
Instead, it's the result of careful work on my part to leave the narrative and
the voice as seamless as possible.
And, on the
topic of voice, it's important to know what I omitted and left intact from the
interview text. I omitted most of the vocal pauses, primarily the phrase
"you know," because in the original interviews these were mostly
thrown in quickly and not actual inquiries directed toward me. I also
omitted the notated pauses because they broke the flow of the narrative.
But I left the slang and vernacular language, as well as the notated laughter,
because I felt it gave a more accurate feel for Shelly's voice and
manner.
I guess the
most important thing to me, in writing the life story, was to give as accurate a
sense of Shelly's character as possible. It came down to one major
difficult decision--did I leave the exact flow of her responses to my questions
intact, and allow my role in the process to be self-evident, or did I edit the
material into something more readily recognizable as a life story? The
only way I could make the decision was by asking myself, "Which way brings
Shelly across better?" I realized that my presence in the life story,
while undeniable, would only be distracting. So I did everything possible
to omit myself, while keeping the bulk of Shelly's words exactly as they were
spoken, just in a more cohesive order.
I guess, in
the end, I feel like writing a truly accurate life story is a massive, probably
impossible, undertaking. Over the course of just two interviews and a few
short visits, I grew to enjoy Shelly's company so much that I was totally
incapable--assuming I was ever capable in the first place--of portraying her in
an unbiased fashion. I think I kept her laughter in the narrative to try
to translate to the reader exactly how much fun our conversations really were.
I learned a
lot from conducting my interviews and writing my own life story, but I guess the
most important thing I learned (aside from how much I hate transcription) is
that there's really no such thing as the perfect life story. Everything
plays a subtle role in corrupting the integrity of the narrative--even having a
sense of rapport with the person you're interviewing, which is supposedly ideal,
winds up biasing your portrayal of them in the end. I hope my life story
is as accurate as possible, but I understand now that accuracy is an impossible
goal. The most I can hope for is that Shelly likes it; that's really the
only valid test of its legitimacy.