In our Spotlight On series, we chat with a member of the Writing NSW community to celebrate their success and learn more about their writing practice. This month we put the spotlight on multifaceted writer Seana Smith. Seana spoke with August from Writing NSW about her 2024 memoir Going Under, confronting trauma, and a life in writing.

Please note: this article contains references to domestic violence and addiction.

How much of Going Under was written during the time the events took place or was it all written looking back?

Going Under was written after all of the events it describes, and many decades after all of the childhood scenes. My initial impetus was to write about my very confusing childhood which had been a great messy mixture of adventure and catastrophe. I had always known I would write about my upbringing and that I would wait until after both Mum and Dad had died, so that I could feel truly free to write about all the things which we were not allowed to talk about, far less write about, when I was young.

I was very motivated to write about the relationship between Mum and Dad and to explore the question that had haunted me for a lifetime, and which drove me out of Scotland to spin around the world: why did she stay? I also wanted to write my mum’s story, how she emancipated herself within her abusive marriage. I knew too that I wanted to explore how looking after Mum when she had dementia became such a source of emotional healing for me.

Although I started writing this memoir in short fragments in 2020, the year after I had stopped drinking myself, it took until 2023 to complete it. In that time, I had to learn to write creative non-fiction after a career in factual TV and factual writing. It was only in 2023 that I realised that the best structure was to frame the entire story, or stories, within the time frame of the year before I stopped drinking. So, the structure became twelve chapters starting in January when Mum died in Scotland, and we moved house from Sydney to Orange. As the year and chapters progress, I fall apart myself and items arrive from Scotland which take me back to the past, so I can tell the story of my childhood, of my father’s alcoholism and violence, of his charisma and of our wild Hebridean sailing adventures.

I wrote and wrote and wrote for the first year, then edited, rewrote and wrote new work over the next couple of years. I feel this memoir is the final work after my apprenticeship in creative non-fiction, which proved to be so much harder to create than factual writing.

Many parts of your childhood memories are harrowing to read. What did you need to do to prepare yourself to write about these experiences?

A stiff coffee was always a good start. I wrote in fairly short bursts and over months and years. I wrote most days, at least five days a week, but often for only 30 minutes at a time. The writing was not as distressing as reading my Mum’s diaries and my own diaries and many letters too. Those written words and seeing my darling mum’s handwriting was so emotional. I flew back in time into the memories and felt I was seeing, hearing, smelling and touching everything that had happened back then. I often went for a walk straight after my writing and editing time, to blow cobwebs away and to reconnect to the here and now, to smell roses and rosemary and lilac and jasmine in the beautiful gardens of East Orange. This helped root me back into the present for the rest of the day.

Were there some truths too painful to confront? How did you decide what needed to be included and what could be left out?

There was nothing too painful to confront. All the memories both of my Dad’s appalling behaviour and my own had been living very vivaciously in my head for many, many years. I had often wished my memory was not so sharp. People ask me how I can remember things so clearly, and I say that’s what trauma does; it stamps the event deep in your brain and you wish you didn’t remember it so well. It was a relief to get things out of my brain and onto the page. It was a lustral catharsis, the writing of this memoir.

Many things were left out, mainly stories that I did not feel were entirely mine to tell. I also left out most of my own very messy emotional and sexual disasters from my 20’s; some are there but there were many more that are not. I was very repetitive in my bad behaviour, and it just would have been boring for the reader if I had detailed the whole horrendous lot.

I don’t think we really get the choice of a truth being too painful to confront. The truths are there and are painful anyway, they are part of our lived experience, we cannot avoid them. We have to live with what has been done, with all that is in the past, the trick is to find acceptance and peace and to live in the present, be here and now in the here and now.

You write across a range of genres and in diverse formats. Do you take on these different projects concurrently or separately? How does this approach impact each work you put out?

I was doing my usual factual writing alongside memoir writing, and learning how to write creative non-fiction. I felt and feel very capable in writing useful, factual information and it was good to spend most of my day in that comfortable space where I feel competent.

Learning the craft of creative non-fiction was well outside my comfort zone at first. Whilst it’s a joy to learn new skills and to apprentice oneself to mentors and wiser creative writers, it also threw up the self-doubt and lack of confidence that all writers face. That was a shock at first. I learned to live with it and to try not to take myself too seriously, a crucial life skill.

How do you approach a publisher with such a broad range of genres? Is it a hindrance or an advantage?

I am very fortunate that I have only worked with one publisher, since my first factual book Sydney For Under Fives came out in 2001 with Pan Macmillan. My publisher there, Jane Curry, left to start her own independent company, Ventura Press, and we have worked together ever since. Jane has published four editions of The Australian Autism Handbook, which has always been the book I am most proud of. When I finished the memoir, I showed it to her first and she was keen to publish it. That was good for me as there was immediate certainty. I would have tried other publishers, of course, but not having to was quite a relief. Also, I do not have a lot of patience and so Jane’s love of memoir and her willingness to publish was a blessing for me.

Do you have any advice for those considering writing a memoir that involves trauma or uncomfortable truths?

Firstly, writing memoir and exploring the darker and more difficult times in life can be both therapeutic for yourself and helpful for others who can relate to your story. It is well worth doing. It is honest and honourable labour.

However, first, give it some time. The old cliché of writing from the scar not from the wound is 100% spot on. Also, ensuring that you have support that you know will work for you when you are triggered or in distress is very important. For me it was a psychologist and EMDR therapy in the years I was writing. And lots of walks and swimming.

Writing the early vomit drafts, getting the memories out of your head and onto the page is cleansing. After that, applying writerly craft to turn your story or stories into a memoir also means mastering the story, giving it a beginning, a middle and, crucially, an end. I found this extremely liberating. I literally was the author of my story and I, myself, created the trajectory and the ending, the conclusions. Very helpful.

So, I always say to people, writing memoir is well worth it, but look after yourself well during the entire process. Also, once your book spreads its wings and flies out into the big wide, world, keep the self-care going strong.

In terms of the writing, I am a firm believer in pouring everything out there, write about other people as much as you like, write the worst things you have ever done, all your trauma, your shame. As Lee Kofman says, ‘write what make you blush’. You can then work with your words, weigh them, sift them, decide what to keep, and whether all the stories you have written are really yours to tell. Editing and decisions about what stays and what is left out is much easier to do once it’s all out of your head and on the page.

Seana Smith is a Scottish writer who studied Classics at the University of Oxford and worked for 10 years as a TV researcher and producer at Channel 9 in Sydney, and at the BBC in London and Glasgow. Seana has written several factual books, including The Australian Autism Handbook, now in its fourth edition. Her latest book is Going Under: A Memoir of Family Secrets, Addiction, and Escape. She has also published multiple websites including Hello Sydney Kids, Swim the World, and Sober Journeys. Seana hosts The Publisher and the Writer podcast with Jane Curry of Ventura Press.

Read more about Seana here and Going Under here.

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