Sam Skelton
ACADEMIC
MAPPING THE BITS OF BITMAP: DECODING IMAGE MEMORY TO FORMAT NARRATIVE MEMOIR ‘Bitmap’ began by programming a Raspberry Pi to display deep web activity on my television. My intention was to watch the constant messages my computer devices were sending to each other, to the server and to their maker. The lines of code scrolled up the screen: Are you there? Are you ready? Do you see me? Will you answer? I was reading The. PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson and had become interested in how she used the internet as plot device, and how she might have written technology in the present day, rather than the year 2000 when it was first published. I was holding the book in my hand, then dropped it. On retrieval it fell open to; ‘This is where the story starts. Here, in these long lines of laptop DNA’ (Winterson, 2000, p.4). I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with my ex-husband about computer code resembling DNA. It was something I’d forgotten but came flooding back. I had never been able to write my side of the story of my marriage and its eventual end, I’d never been able to tell my children my version, despite their adult interest. The memory, along with the scrolling code on my television, like laptop DNA carrying genetic instructions for its own replication, prompted me to take an uncharacteristic evolutionary step. It was time. Unlike computer memory that is designed for precise and consistent recall, my recollection is uneven. John Mullen points out that the reliability of first person narration is dependent on memory: ‘What matters is exactly the difference between what is remembered and what is not’ (Mullen, 2006, p.50), so the moments and conversations represented in the text ‘acquire a special energy because they are edged by silence or forgetting’ (Mullen, 2006, p.50). I started to write out a series of snapshots I could remember from life with my ex-husband. I could conjure up pinpoint images of locations to begin with; the National Exhibition Centre, a hotel, homes we lived in, the woods, a beach. Next came snippets of conversations and his all-consuming obsession with computers. As I began to record the details, in notes, drawings, and voice memos on my phone, these central static pictures and moments began to spread, developing themselves like polaroid instamatic photographs coming to life in my hands. In ‘Theme and Sequence’, Bill Greenwell states that, ‘writers do not think in themes when they begin to write; they tend to think in images’ (Greenwell, 2009, p.262), and these images are what lead to sequence of plot and emergence of theme. Reflecting on the bits of information I was extracting from memory, they seemed a fit with narrative memoir as genre, using a clearly indicated linear timeline as plot, and thematically charting the evolution of computer technology and its impact on my relationship. Once I had a timeline, I began to research computers from 1988 to present day, with the aim of enriching the project but also as attempt to produce transferable knowledge and forge a ‘dynamic relationship between practice, methodology, theory and artefact’ (Kroll, 2019, p.102). Giving my remembered events a framework by adding computer evolutionary facts, would hopefully allow the interweaving of the factual and historical with my subjective and personal, to form a methodology that was more robust. The first thing I wrote was ‘A note to my children’, as explanation or apology for writing it at all. It was an emotional experience and prompted consideration of where I was located, and whether I needed to maintain consistent voice and tone in what I wrote. Who was the ‘me’ in the text? Was I still in the images I was remembering, or was I here in present day? Would that change my perspective? What was my attitude going to be? In order to create some structure, I mapped out the entire book, chapter by chapter, using the images I had developed so far, as starting points. I added what I had already researched about computers and made notes on all the settings for further investigation. Graeme Harper suggests that research in creative writing should partly be explored through habitats of writing as ‘spaces and places that reflect modes of action and modes of thinking’ (Harper, 2019, p.135) and that such a habitat is a place ‘where the creative writer is normally located’ (Harper, 2019, p.135). I considered this to try to answer the questions of how to situate myself in the text. I became fascinated with my writing habitat as an extension of Mullen’s idea of memory. I attempted to insert myself back in to the spaces I was remembering and write from the habitat of memory itself, as a place where I could be ‘normally located’(Harper, 2019, p.135), piecing bits together from silence and forgetting, as much as from what I remembered. To me this was remembrance as a creative act but also sense making, a type of ‘coming home’ in multiple habitats that had all once been mine. Memoir is ‘a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge’ (Collins Online Dictionary, 2021) and I had already existed in the places I was writing about and was trying to get back to them through memory to write the narrative. This transportation to the past, and sitting in it to write, became the work. Annie Dillard observes in her book The Writing Life that; ‘the writing has changed, in your hands, and in a twinkling, from an expression of your notions to an epistemological tool’ (Dillard, 1989, p.3). My attempt to inhabit the past, combined with further exploration of specific settings and investigation into computer evolution, raised questions of realities that were not clear. The framework of technology and place I was building did not seem strong enough to lend meaning to the memory of my marriage. I became unsure about what was true and searched for universal concepts that were recognisable in my recollections. The writing began to lend itself to transformations. I began to see myself not just as a person inhabiting my memories to write, but as a store of knowledge itself. My central first-person narrator, Tara (my middle name), me, became the Big Bang, a Christian stained-glass window, a trapped Victorian woman, a cave witch, the Pied Piper, all hopefully recognisable to any readership. Each transformation closed gaps in my memory, formed images that would hopefully be decoded as reflection on universal truths examining creation, religion, history, feminism, myth and storytelling but also acting as indicators of love and emotional extremes felt within relationships. The imagery would ask the reader to piece my story and their prior knowledge together, to format meaning. A bitmap has two generally recognised definitions and I included them at the start of my creative piece. One is concerned with the organisation of memory to allow imaging, and the other is the building up of digital ‘bits’ to form a picture. Both have to be arranged correctly to make sense, or be decoded, so we can see them. Incorrect formatting can lead to unrecognisable display, blue screens, catastrophic failures and cascading systems failures. The building of a bitmap seemed similar to the process of writing, placing bits side by side to create narrative, but as Rebecca Solnit describes, writing can also be ‘the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown’ (Solnit, 2013, p.3). I chose ‘Bitmap’ as the title of my narrative memoir, not only as indicator of the information technology content but as acknowledgment of the process of remembrance and writing. As Greenwell states, ‘when life writing focuses, especially in snapshots and extracts, on aspects of a life, it can easily build up the kind of strength of theme to be found in fiction’ (Greenwell, 2009, p.269). The relationship with my ex-husband had collapsed in a cascade of stages that ended with the end of my world, but as I wrote in Bitmap: ‘I say: ‘What will happen if it’s the end of the world?’ You say: ‘Life will go on’’ (Skelton, 2021, p.9) and it did, the images remaining as bits of my map however much I thrashed or drowned. I wanted to use the strength of theme to climb out of the water, place pins across the landscape and work out how to navigate from one to the other creating a new cartography long overdue. The decision to adopt narrative memoir was prompted in part by Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby, a book that could be described as weaving memoir, fairy-tale and historical place in a manner similar to Jeanette Winterson’s The. PowerBook and Written on the Body. Both writers lead the way in testing the liminal space between fiction and fact and use storytelling and experimentation with multimodal text as metaphor for attachment, love and loss. In ‘Bitmap’ I intended to experiment in this area by including computer code in several of the planned sections and maybe combining several chapters at once through page layout. I also wanted to explore intertextuality and used the original German from Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. It would be interesting to include some of the musical score. Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am, confirmed the manner in which unique experiences are underscored by understandings that may universally resonate with readers. Many people have felt grief or regret, fallen in love and reflected on death. O’Farrells sentence, ‘he has retained the end of some vital thread and my leaving means that it has been unravelling ever since’ (O’Farrell, 2017, p.51), informed my chapter ‘Siege’ with my swimming of my ex-husbands moat and the writing of connection and distance between us. I liked her dating of each chapter and I might consider this for context if I decide against a linear timeline. Joan Didion’s memoir, A Year of Magical Thinking, albeit about the death of her beloved husband, was also instrumental in teaching me the importance of including the ordinariness of loss, the grief felt in everyday activities and the instantaneousness with which life can change. My chapter the ‘End of the world’ grew from these realisations and her line; ‘let them become the photograph on the table’ (Didion, 2005, p.226), contributed to my consideration and focus on my ex-husbands photograph in Dust. My editorial choices were complex for this assignment. I did not start writing ‘Bitmap’ in a linear way but instead, from the inside out. I began with one page or paragraph, then wrote into it, in a recursive, circular manner. I aimed for a form of expansionism, with several points on a map, or bits of the picture, gradually growing in size. None of the pieces I am submitting together for this module are nearly finished and will be much longer chapters if I continue to write them. Bill Greenwell speaks of the ‘strong temptation to include every known fact about an individual in a piece of life writing’ (Greenwell, 2009, p.34) and I have heeded his advice to supress my instincts to include every minute detail, instead taking my time to focus on personal feeling rather than fact, then slowly adding more detail of computer technology and location. Some chapters are more developed than others, with NEC being the longest so far. I decided to link them all together for ease and consistency of marking, redrafting the beginnings and ends of my tentative work so far, then deep editing for meaning to amend and revise any central ideas to fit. All of my chapters were written in present tense as I had attempted to inhabit my memories, and I included past tense and added italicised comments directed to my ex-husband in the present day. These editorial decisions added multidimensionality and clarity to the finished piece. Once satisfied I copy edited for content, cutting it to less than six thousand words as required, and moved on to more technical surface editing, spelling and punctuation. Finally, I emailed it to a friend whose proof reading I trust more than my own. The editorial process has changed the work considerably. What I have written so far has less of a technological or cartographic feel than I aimed for. There is too much space between the ‘bits’ for the images to be clear or the narrative memoir to be formatted obviously enough. It occurs to me that maybe it was just therapeutic writing after all, and I’m not sure that I like it. Possibly I won’t continue ‘Bitmap’, but I have learned considerably through the process and will be developing my hybridised ‘Mullen memory’ and ‘Harper habitat’ research methodology for use in other writing. Annie Dillard notes ‘On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away’ (Dillard, 1989, p.14), and I find that comforting. Decoding images from memory to format narrative memoir has taught me; image and remembering are rarely static, computer systems can be fallible, and maps are usually part of a larger cartography. I may use parts of it in future writing, but for now, ‘Bitmap’ remains just bits of images on my map.
LOVE AND WAR: REFLECTIONS ON WRITING LONELINESS, RESILIENCE, SURVIVAL AND LOSS. My mother loves wood. She lives alone, since my father’s death, in an apartment rammed full of antique wooden curios: Oak wood puzzle boxes; pine travelling trunks; Japanese cherry cabinets and mahogany writing desks. My short story Mahogany began with her, my intent to write romance that was; ‘cheerful and plot-driven, with heroines who triumph over adversity’ and with ‘forward movement towards resolution’ (March-Russell.2009. p200). There is however a loneliness in my mother’s existence. She is content enough, but I felt it important this was also represented. Jerome Sterne suggests in Write What you Know; ‘if your fiction is to live, something deeply immediate and personal must be at its heart’ (Sterne. 1991. P62). Drawing on my mother’s new solitary life and her apartment, my starting point anchored place and intent, but Kate Bolick’s Spinster also influenced my thinking. Bolick’s work of cultural criticism takes a look at women ‘having it all,’ reminding us; ‘how difficult it is to detach ourselves from the mass emotions and social conditions of the age we are born in to’ and the illusions created to conform to stereotypes of love and belonging (Bolick.2015.p14). I wanted my protagonist to be recognisably conventional, but I began thinking of ways to write romance without cliché, use of formulaic tropes or conventional means of sexual attraction. We studied The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith in a ‘Juvenile Trash’ seminar. I was struck by Highsmith’s portrayal of Therese’s obsession with Carol and her writing of gaze. I made a decision that the romance would be same sex. Flannery O’Connor’s advises that ‘the eye is the organ that eventually involves the whole personality’ and I began to consider female gaze as construction of personality and a starting point for developing my main character (O’Connor. 2014. P92): She would be female; the pace would be driven by her loneliness, and her longing for company would be the building block through which the reader would construct her. I wrote myself character questions to answer about her. This is a method I have learned from acting when developing a character for a script. I have always found this helpful but had not previously applied this method to writing fiction. Once done, I set about deciding on the object of her love. Objectophilia or object sexuality is the development of; ‘deep emotional and/or romantic attachments to (and have relationships with) specific inanimate objects or structures’, a belief that the object is an equal partner and often that the feelings are reciprocated (Griffiths. 2013. Para 1). I engaged with researching this phenomenon (see links listed below) as a subversion of standard romance, and as a manner to further examine and engage with Bolick’s difficulties of detachment from social conditioning. Practically, romantic attachment to an object had advantage in adding specific details that would engage the senses of the reader with the action, as; ‘detail is “definite” and “concrete” when it appeals to the senses. It should be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched’ (Burroway et al. 2019. P23). I did consider the ethical implications of representation, and while I was intending to use humour, I hoped to represent the love felt by members of the object sexuality community with honesty and integrity, albeit in fictional short story form. If I was to continue working on this piece, I would certainly conduct further research in this area. Thinking of story, I decided to follow a chronological order in the narrative. I am new to short story writing and found this more conducive to creating the plot as; ‘a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic and emotional significance’ (Burroway et al. 2019 p143). I began with my character standing outside a shop window, looking through war glass that was not completely transparent, as signifier of obscured and obfuscated gaze and emotional separation. I initially attempted to set the piece during a pandemic. I did not want to include much dialogue or human interaction to enable a heightened sense of isolation, but after a first draft and some feedback from a tutor, I realised that the timelessness of the writing was one of its strengths and changed my mind. I redrafted it, omitting any reference to modern day, having learned that regular feedback was an essential part of the drafting and editing process. My previous character development questions paid off by providing answers in my writing: My protagonist would be wealthy and able to bring Mahogany home by offering “a certain quantity of financial incentive” and to pay for the table settings. There would be snobbery in her attitude to the “decrepitude” of the antiques shop. She would be self-conscious of her obsession with Mahogany and yet maintain some critical distance in the description of her actions. I began to hear her voice, in the way I have done with scriptwriting, and was genuinely surprised by typing “fucking spoons” during their break up. There was a degree to which my writing was emanating from a flow, and the work was writing itself on to the page. I designed the meet-cute, first with Mahogany and afterwards the chair, as accidental. Joyce Carol Oates states in her article Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman that: ‘The inspiration a writer takes from a predecessor is usually accidental…those individuals met by chance who become integral to our destinies’ and any transformation is like falling in love (Oates in Bailey. 2011.p15). The protagonist would fall in love after chance meetings, just as I had been inspired by ‘meeting’ short stories I had read during my studies. During the Creative Workshop we have been encouraged to read as writers. To examine form and function and develop critically as both. Italo Calvino’s mythogeographical accounts sent my protagonist walking. Roald Dahl’s childish humour brought comedy. Virginia Woolf’s modernism inspired density of language, Franz Kafka, a sense of claustrophobia and absurdity as real and unsettling, and all of the reading I did highlighted the importance of context. The courting of Mahogany with music and presents and the details of the items arriving by post aimed to create; ‘meaning by providing precise and useful information’ that could be decoded to add understanding of the story (Samson. 2017. Para 9). The ambiguity of Mahogany’s participation and the mental health of the protagonist were deliberately left up to the reader to interpret. Context would help with any decisions they might make. Mahogany was a story written first and foremost for my mother as tribute to her resilience and strength since my father’s death. It has a positive ending in keeping with the romance genre, but also to make her smile and perhaps look at her chairs sideways. It is a love story. Spoils of War also contains heartbreak and loss, in a very different way, but it was resilience and survival during war that I was most interested in. Spoils of War is a collection of verbatim fragmented fiction. Four of the pieces are drawn from recorded archival interviews, and one from a story my father frequently told when he was still living. They represent the voices of the now dead, who survived the Second World War, the resilience needed, the loss experienced, and the cost of living through war. From the start I aimed to present something visceral, tangible and truthful. I chose to use verbatim as it is; ‘better suited to the task of dealing with serious subject matter’ and more appropriate for the stories of survival and loss I was planning (Hammond & Steward. 2008. P11). Using the actual words spoken in remembered experience of war, might allow an emotional contact between now and then. I was mindful of the dangers of exploitative or voyeuristic qualities, but felt by editing, arranging and recontextualising the tales with ethical integrity, they would be a powerful voice to be heard. With careful consideration, the words might be revelatory and truthful in a manner that I could not fictionally reproduce. During transcription I was careful to get all the words correct, include non-verbal communication, external sounds, fillers, and false starts. I wanted the dead to speak for themselves as much as possible. Bombers is the story that my father told about his youth. It concerns my grandmother’s attempt to keep her sons safe without sending them for evacuation. I remember fragments of my grandmother; curly hair, an apron, the smell of pastry baking, clinging to her stockinged knees. She died when I was five years old and it was my attempt to fill in the spaces between those fragments over the years, along with my fascination with my father’s war stories, that first gave me the idea for Spoils of War. Recalling my grandmother is splintered and broken in to parts like fragmented fiction. This fiction examines the space of what is not presented as much as what is, the ‘un-saidness’ inviting sense making because; ‘sometimes the world steers you towards the broken apart’ (Gleeson. 2020. Para 4). I wanted Spoils of War to represent that brokenness, and the resilience of the survivors who had pieced their lives back together. In her article on fragmented fiction Samantha Edmonds states that; ‘we need fragmented fiction because life simply isn’t like a paragraph. Its shattered, patterned, associative’ as I imagined living through war (Edmonds. 2017. Para 6). In fragmenting the stories told, I intended to create form and content with a focus on what was not said to ensure; ‘they didn’t follow a linear narrative but instead consist of scene-scraps’, like completing a puzzle (Edmonds. 2017. Para3). I started with Run Rabbit Run, my aim to set pace examining a child newly orphaned and lost in the bombing chaos. The sense of confusion continued along with a look at life expectancy for fighting men in Young Pilots. I felt it important to challenge the idea of the war effort and community spirit as completely cohesive. My father certainly did not remember the war as one of patriotism and pulling together. This ‘otherness’ of feeling separate, is in There’s Them People. My family’s loss is the theme for Bombers and finally I could not create a collection without including the Holocaust. Each piece was initially a puzzle, a mass of transcribed words and an ethical challenge, considering what to include or omit to remain truthful to the stories. I trawled for material in the online British Library Sounds Collection. Many of the interviews offered were lengthy and contained only short mention of the war. I avoided any interviews that included specific identifiers that would not maintain anonymity in the text. I was moved by the accounts. Most had been recorded when the interviewee was elderly, and the subjects often became emotional recounting their story. I rigorously questioned my intent in producing the work, but the thing I kept coming back to, aside from the public nature of the records, was the desire of each contributor for their story to be heard. As Janine St. Germain states in her blog, submitting to interview is: ‘Like sending a message in a bottle, they’ve created something they believe will reach someone somehow, no matter how far-fetched this belief may be. This is a tremendous act of faith’ (St. Germain. 2021. Para 10). I considered how my grandmother and father would feel. Having family connection in one of the pieces helped clarify my accountability and my reflexivity as writer and relative. In repositioning the material collated as fragmented verbatim work I hoped to recover experiences of survival and loss while privileging truth. I thought they would approve. Once transcribed, my process in collating the wealth of material involved mapping each story. Edmonds advises; ‘there must still be a plot, the more familiar the better’ and I distilled each one to an essence that felt authentic and more manageable in terms of text (Edmonds. 2017.para9). Initially I maintained chronology as I drafted each piece, cutting away text until what remained was more practically workable. If I repeated this exercise, I would definitely pick out lines instead. It was amazingly time consuming, however it left me with sentences that elicited my greatest emotional response. Gleeson suggests that chronology is not important and; ‘on the page, the fragment is standalone’ and this gave me the confidence to abandon chronological order as my next developmental step, but also as attempt to represent personality. (Gleeson. 2020. Para 6). For example, the interviewee was matter of fact and paused to think in Run Rabbit Run. I fractured every line and left spaces in the text. There’s Them People was angry. I chose black lines to separate the text. Bombers is the most conventional, maintaining a detectable chronology. I found it difficult to maintain emotional distance transcribing his story. It took me the longest time. The creative workshop module has enabled a development in my writing that I could not imagine. I would not have believed that I would be writing romance and verbatim fragmentation with such fervour and enjoyment. I hope that Mahogany and Spoils of War are accepted as the examinations of loneliness, resilience, survival and loss that they are intended to be. (words: 2189) References Bolick, K. (2015) Spinster. Making a Life of One’s Own. Corsair: London. Burroway, J., Stuckey-French, E., Stuckey-French, N., (2019) Writing Fiction: The Art to Narrative Craft (Tenth Ed.). The University of Chicago Press Ltd: Chicago & London. Edmonds. S. (2017) ‘The Shattered Novel. Rules of Fragmented Fiction’: Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. October 29.2017. Accessed 27/1/21 https://gristjournal.com/shattered-novel-rules-fragmented-fiction-samantha-edmonds/ Farman, J. interviewed by Merchant, P. (19-02-2010) British Library Sounds: ‘Oral History of British Science’. Ref: C1379/08 https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history Freeland, H. interviewed by Whitton, S. (11-11-1989). British Library Sounds: ‘The Living Memory of the Jewish Community’. Ref: C410/107 https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history Gleeson. S (2020). ‘Fragmented Narrative Are Broken, Independent, and Honest’. Literary Hub: March 24.2020. Accessed 20/1/21 https://lithub.com/fragmented-narratives-are-broken-independent-and-honest/ Griffiths. M., D. (2013) ‘Intimate and Inanimate: A Brief Look at Object Sexuality’: Psychology Today Online. July 25. 2013. Accessed 24/1/21 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-excess/201307/intimate-and-inanimate Hudson, J., interviewed by Thallon, A. (20-06-2009). British Library Sounds: ‘Disability Voices’. Ref: C1345/59 https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history March-Russell, P., (2009) The Short Story: An Introduction. Edinburgh University Press Ltd: Edinburgh. Midwinter, E. interviewed by Brodie, L. (14-07-2014) British Library Sounds: ‘Charity and Social Welfare’. Ref; C1155/23 https://sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history Oates, J., C., (2011) ‘Reading as a Writer: The Artist as Craftsman’ on Moodle: accessed 26/1/21 https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=881691 O’Connor, F., (1953) Mystery and Manners. Faber and Faber: London. On Moodle: accessed 25/1/21 https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=881690 Samson, J., (2017) ‘Why Context Matters in Writing: Building a relationship with the Reader’. The Writing Cooperative: Jun 28. 2017. Accessed 24/1/21 https://writingcooperative.com/why-context-matters-in-writing-f52ad075c07a St. Germain. J., ‘Hidden Stories in Archival Collections’ Cubic Footnotes: Wordpress.org. On Moodle: accessed 25/1/21 http://www.cubicfootnotes.com/using-archival-collections-source-creativity-inspiration/ Sterne, J., (1991) Making Shapley Fiction. On Moodle: accessed 24/1/21 https://learn.cardiffmet.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=881689 Links on Objectophilia https://youtu.be/f3znIu2dKBo https://medium.com/@mytiyoapp/been-in-love-with-an-object-its-not-as-rare-as-you-think-3670c768cd0 https://www.insideedition.com/gallery/meet-people-who-are-married-inanimate-objects-44311 https://www.wattpad.com/629837397-the-extension-of-lgbt-vocabularly-and-awareness http://www.mtv.co.uk/sex/articles/objectophilia-meet-9-people-who-fancy-objects
ABOUT FACE: A DOCTORAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL TO INVESTIGATE THE PERCEPTION, REPRESENTATION AND LIVED EXPERIENCE OF VISIBLE FACIAL DIFFERENCE IN WOMEN. I am sitting in front of my mirror. Not just any mirror but one carefully chosen; deliberately aged, slightly distressed, with a sepia hue that banishes stark outlines. My image, in particles of light, streams towards the glass then bounces off the smooth surface. Everything in front of the mirror is reflected backwards, retracing the path it travelled to get there. This is how mirrors really work. My reflection is not reversed or switched left to right, up or down. It is inverted front to back. I am coming and going at the same time. My face was. My face is. My face was. Is again. Facial atypicality, variance, disfigurement, difference, has affected my qualitative lived experience since surgery for cancer first in 2016, and again in 2018. Yaron et al suggest an atypical face can ‘disrupt individuals’ engagement with everyday projects’ (Yaron, 2017, para. 1) so facial identity ‘ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness’ (Yaron, 2017, para. 1) with potential for impact on, and alteration of, gaze and visibility. The impact of my facial scarring has included changes in; self-recognition, public acknowledgement and social reception, workplace acceptance, social media presentation and community membership. As a consequence, I have altered many aspects of my life, retreating to a quieter way of living while becoming an active member of online facial difference communities, who welcome difference with an understanding of its impact. Rifkin states that ‘self-concept revolves around the face, as it is the primary means by which humans recognise and interact with each other’ (Rifkin et al, 2018, para. 6), but modern-day facial visibility seems standardised, typical, convergent with understandings of acceptability and in the case of women, aesthetic beauty. I have been offered further plastic surgery to ‘correct’ my face, been differentiated from male patients and those born with, and in the words of one surgeon, ‘used to’ their ‘abnormality.’ It is expected that I will continue to seek enhancements to my unavoidable existing facial modification. Chatting with others, this attitude seems more prevalent in the medical treatment of women. Should my self-concept be dependent on typicality? Where am I positioned in the adjustments I have already made? During preliminary research I became intrigued by the French professor and performance artist ‘Orlan,’ who surgically altered her face to examine attitudes of expected female aesthetics. She hoped to expose ‘the arbitrariness of the standards, the impossibility of meeting them, the unchallenged assumption that every woman wants beauty’ (Kauffman, 2002, p. 107) but why would anyone choose facial disfiguration? The reactions to her work are fascinating. I am also interested in questions around atypical faces becoming more normalised across media platforms and how much negative mythology emanates, and is perpetuated by, fiction. In fiction, facial marking seems to represent danger, pain or trauma. Is this a continuance of historical fact and/or mythology? My research interest is in investigation of the intersection between fictional narratives and ‘factual’ historical representations of female facial difference, between self-identification as facially disfigured and similar women’s experience, and between societal expectation and possibility. I would like to attempt quantification of the lived experience of visible facial difference in women. Through practice -based research I will be creating an artefact in the form of an eighty-thousand-word narrative memoir/novel. The artefact will combine techniques incorporating memoir, examination of fictional characters already recognisable as ‘other’, historical research regarding women with facial variance, and verbatim text I will transcribe from interviews with participants from the facial difference community. The interweaving of fictional research and historical factual accounts will allow a balance to my subjective and personal memoir and form a methodology that is contextualised and more robust. The addition of verbatim gathered through interviews with women identifying as facially different, might create an interface ‘in which textual modes are interwoven but also confront and mutually interrogate each other’ (Smith & Watson, 2002, p.21). This multiple investigation of fiction, history, remembrance and verbatim, will produce data allowing discovery and examination of correlation, similarity and difference. Similar hybridisation, although not on facial difference, has been successfully used by writers including Jeanette Winterson, Rebecca Solnit and Ali Smith. Mixing the origins of my data will produce new and unique knowledge on the lived experience of visible facial difference and atypicality in women. The primary aims will be two-fold; creative being the development of creative text, and critical, the underpinning contextualisation to guarantee the unique knowledge gained, is plausible, and can be questioned and challenged with ‘transferability of understanding’ (Ayers, 1956, p.4). Thus, the project will be enriched to forge a ‘dynamic relationship between practice, methodology, theory and artefact’ (Kroll, 2013, p.102). I envisage developing a critical-creative feedback loop aiming for Graeme Harper’s ideal of an ‘entirely interrelated creative and critical sense’ (Harper, 2013, p147), invaluable in the growth of writing and critical evaluation process. As Deborah Brandt points out; ‘sense making in writing entails more than producing a coherent and appropriate text; fundamentally writers must also make continual sense to themselves of what they are doing’ (Brandt, 1992, para 16) and I expect my recursive feedback loop to allow evolution by continual testing. The resultant creative work will be accompanied by a critical self-commentary with action research documentation. This will be based on J.T Welsch’s ‘Critical Approaches’ advice on defending work to an academic audience by a process of ‘reflection, articulation, creation and demonstration’ (Welsch, 2021, para 15) showing ‘how to represent the circular processes within a seemingly linear structure’ (Welsch, 2021, para 16). My secondary research aim will be to further develop my technique of writing from memory started during my writing for MA module Creative Workshop 2. Please see attached Appendix for more detailed explanation. My methodology will include: Collation of personal medical diaries, notes and creative writing from my facial surgeries, as source material. Recruitment of female volunteers who are willing to answer my questionnaire and allow me to use their spoken/written narratives. Analysis of questionnaire results for commonality, patterns, as stimulus for my writing and to identify potential verbatim material. A literature review of facially different female fictional characters. Consideration of how these materials will shape the artefact. Research in to Welsh historical accounts of women with facial disfigurement, atypicality or visible difference. Time frameworks may have to be defined depending on quantity of findings. Further development of techniques for writing from memory. (Please see Appendix). Apply reporting methods including reflection, intuitive and factual insights as evidence of research. Document emergent habits and cognitive processes to articulate my position in relationship to writing and research in a continuous loop. Evaluate and revise my methods and progress. Remain open to change, serendipitous additions, new questions and reshaping goals. I am aware that there are a complex combination of challenges and constraints involved in this proposed research and I have drawn up a preliminary list of considerations: How do I justify my focus only on women? Is the subjective value of ‘woman’ linked with perceived facial normalcy? Should I examine different cultural frameworks for ‘woman’? Should I include people identifying as women? How do I recruit and reassure questionnaire volunteers? Numbers are not a variant I can necessarily predict. Will a small sample size create enough data for analysis? Am I including subjects born with facial atypicality or just those who have acquired facial difference? Ethically, I have some responsibility for my interviewees. I may need to be aware of the intersection with research currently being conducted in the field of psychology and possibly signpost to support and therapeutic services. How much is face presented as disruptive presence in fiction? What proportion of this should be represented and how? How do I ensure that my narrative memoir/novel is recognised as an artefact with underlying critical methodology? How do I objectively evaluate my own writing, especially my experiential knowledge and bias as a facially different woman? How will I disseminate my findings in a manner that is accessible to all? Should I consider a concurrent podcast or similar? I observe my visage, deliberately obfuscated, arriving and departing in my antiqued mirror but it’s a trick: I am not seen then unseen, my face is constant in its adoption of my selfness, structure, sinew. My old image was so familiar I didn’t feel it. This new one is an unrelenting stranger, a needling narcissist so concerned with who sees it, how it is interpreted, what it represents. It imprints itself on my unwilling mind’s eye, cracking its way through the glass seeking unity, consolation, acceptance. I try to meet it without girding my body, whispering reassurances to the rest of me that not everything has changed, that it isn’t just all about face. I believe this would be important, interesting and hopefully, ground breaking research that would contribute new and unique knowledge on the experience of women living with visible facial difference. I have shown dedicated commitment on my MA Creative Writing course, achieved consistently high grades and would be delighted to undertake this work supervised at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Thank you for your consideration. References Ayer, A. J. (1956) The Problem of Knowledge. London: MacMillan & Co Ltd. Brandt, D. (1992) ‘The Cognitive as the Social: An Ethnomethodological Approach to Writing Process Research’. Sage Publications. Vol 9:3. [Online]. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0741088392009003001 (Accessed: 18th June 2021). Harper, G. (2013) ‘The Generations of Creative Writing Research’, in Harper, G. and Kroll, J. (eds.) Research Methods in Creative Writing. London: Red Globe Press, pp. 133-154. Kauffman, L.S. (2002) ‘Cutups in Beauty School- and postscripts, January 2000 and December 2001’, in Smith, S and Watson, J (eds.) Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. pp. 103-131. Mullan, J. (2006) How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Rifkin, W.J. et al (2018) ‘Facial Disfigurement and Identity: A Review of the Literature and Implications for Facial Transplantation’. AMA Journal of Ethics, 20/4/2018 [Online]. Available at: https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/facial-disfigurement-and-identity-review-literature-and-implications-facial-transplantation/2018-04 (Accessed 16th November 2020) Smith, S. and Watson, J. (2002) Interfaces: Women/Autobiography/Image/Performance. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Welsch, J.T (2021) ‘“Critical Approaches to Creative Writing”: A Case Study.’ nawe. [Online]. Available at: https://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/current-wip-edition-2/articles/critical-approaches-to-creative-writing-a-case-study.html (Accessed 18th June 2021) Yaron, G., Meershoek, A., Widdershoven, G. et al. (2017) ‘Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals’. SpringerLink: [Online] Human Studies, 40, pp. 285-307. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10746-017-9426-8#citeas (Accessed 18th June 2021) Appendix Inhabiting Memory: A brief explanation of combining Mullan memory and Harper habitat to write ‘from home.’ Graeme Harper suggests that research in creative writing should partly be explored through habitats of writing as ‘spaces and places that reflect modes of action and modes of thinking’ (Harper, 2013, p.135) and that such a habitat is a place ‘where the creative writer is normally located’ (Harper, 2013, p.135). I considered this to try to answer the questions of how to situate myself in the memoir text I was writing for Creative Workshop 2. I became fascinated with my writing habitat as an extension of Mullan’s idea of memory. John Mullan points out that the reliability of first person narration is dependent on memory: ‘What matters is exactly the difference between what is remembered and what is not’ (Mullan, 2006, p.50), so the moments and conversations represented in the text ‘acquire a special energy because they are edged by silence or forgetting’ (Mullan, 2006, p.50). Interweaving the two concepts, I attempted to insert myself back in to the spaces I was remembering and write from the habitat of memory itself, as a place where I could be ‘normally located’(Harper, 2013, p.135), piecing bits together from silence and forgetting, as much as from what I remembered. To me this was remembrance as a creative act but also sense making, a type of ‘coming home’ in multiple habitats that I had previously existed in and had all once been mine. References: Harper, G. (2013) ‘The Generations of Creative Writing Research’, in Harper, G. & Kroll, J. (eds.) Research Methods in Creative Writing. London: Red Globe Press, pp. 133-154. Mullan, J. (2006) How Novels Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.