Diane Schoemperlen on writing a memoir about falling in love with a prison inmate

From the first line of Diane Schoemperlen's This is Not My Life, you know things are about to get real: "It is safe to say that never once in my life had I dreamed of being in bed with a convicted killer... "

Schoemperlen, a Governor General's Literary Award-winning fiction writer, was volunteering at a hot meal program when she met "Shane" (a pseudonym), a prison inmate with a teardrop tattoo below his left eye. The two began a relationship that lasted for six tumultuous years. 

In her own words, Schoemperlen describes the process of writing her first memoir — from choosing the perfect dollar store notebook to creating a first-draft alter ego.

Writing outside the lines

"I used spiral-bound hardcover black sketch books, large ones that I got at the dollar store for $2 each. I would write by hand in the notebook until I got to a part where I felt unsure what I would do next, and then I would type into the computer. So my writing process moves back and forth between writing by hand and the computer.

"I am an exceedingly tidy person in my writing. I tried to free myself by buying notebooks that were blank and didn't have lines. I felt like I could be messy in the notebook. Some of it was pretty messy to live through... I felt a real need to be able to loosen the reins that might be restraining me from trying to say what it was that I really wanted to say."

Keeping it real

"One of the struggles I had with this book was figuring out how to write a memoir. I had some totally mistaken idea that, because I knew how to write fiction, I would also know how to write a memoir. I was wrong. I spent almost a year just trying to figure out how to do this. I started reading a lot of other memoirs and also a lot of other books about how to write memoirs and in fact I think that made me feel more confused.

"Somewhere in all that reading that I did about memoirs, someone said that if you're writing a book of fiction it's like you're starting with an empty canvas and you're filling it up. But if you're writing a memoir, that canvas is already jammed full, so you have to take things out and try to make a story out of this massive amount of information. That was something that I did find quite difficult, trying to shape it as a story. After all, I was writing about my life, so everything seemed important."

A little help from Mavis

"To be honest, it was fairly emotionally difficult all the way through. One of the ways I tried to manage that was that, at first, when I was outlining the book. I actually wrote it in the third person, even though I knew it was going to end up being first person. I called my third-person self Mavis, which is my middle name, and that really did help to feel more detached from some of the emotional stuff.

"The truth of it is, it was difficult in lots of ways emotionally. When I was writing about the times we were happy and things were going great, I felt really sad because it didn't last. When I wrote about some of the more infuriating and upsetting times, I felt angry all over again. When I would get through working on one of the really difficult parts, I would feel a certain amount of relief. The writing of the book helped me sort through everything that had happened and come to terms with it."

Talking it out

"Some people I know have been waiting a long time for this book to come out because I've been talking about it since 2013. A few of my friends are probably a bit relieved. Everyone was really supportive and excited to read it. With my other books, I've been very reluctant to talk about what I was working on. I guess I was a little bit superstitious that if I talked about it, I would lose momentum. That was completely different with this book. I talked about it with anyone who would listen. It helped me to sort of work things out that I wasn't quite sure I knew how to say. Talking it through to somebody else often solved whatever question I had."

Diane Schoemperlen's comments have been edited and condensed.