The Author’s Art – How it’s done – Donald Hedges. (Copyright)

Putting together an autobiography.

 

There are many ways of putting together an autobiography; one can either zone in on particular stories, or highlights of one’s life or one can culture selected or edited highlights. Which one would you choose?

 

Depending on memories, I would tend to go the route of remembering from the earliest times. It sounds more authentic. The alternative is to get edited highlights or particular stories which may seem authentic, or they may not.

 

It’s like saying, I sprang fully formed from my mother’s womb and now I am 26 and I remember this, or that. Yes but the question is what were the particular circumstances which led you to the position that you remember this or that. This is where background comes into it.

 

One must in fact show that one did not spring fully formed into any one situation. For example in my first book “In the role of boy” I did not spring as a mature adult into the situation of going to New York. There would have been qualifications to get first and an employer to find before I could have found that money to get the air ticket to New York.

 

The reader must therefore be allowed to ask “How?” How did he become a tax senior, in my case? If you just tell the tale of how you were a tax senior, you are essentially missing the point.

 

This means that one has to create a background, which I hope I have done in the book that I am describing; my background was that I was a tax officer in London and was with the Revenue for four years in my 30’s. Before going to university to do a BA(Hons) Accounting degree which I passed.

 

Having done that degree, I then did one or two tax assignments before I went to RP in Winchester, one was for a firm called SMS in Southampton, the other for a firm called MC in London, E3. I was therefore confident in processing self- assessment cases in bulk and with accuracy. In April 1999 I therefore took this job on with RP and earned £10.00 an hour with it which was extremely good money. It took only one’s week’s work in June 1999 to be able to buy an air ticket.

 

That’s part of the formation of how I got my holiday. But it is not the whole formation. The back story that one might enquire into is how I got to be a tax senior in the first place and how I got into the Inland Revenue. Also, how it was that I came to have a certain amount of accounting knowledge.

 

I got into Accounting because I was in charge of a railway booking office in Oxshott; that place is in Surrey. I was originally in Hampton Court for three months but the awkwardness of the chief clerk there and the fact that he kept upsetting me was pressing on the Area Manager and he moved me.

 

I therefore got to do all the accounting records at this station; they were not especially complex but they had to be right because they involved large amounts of cash. I taught myself most of it and learned how to do it properly and carefully.

 

Somehow I was good at it and my balances were 99% spot on right. I resolved to go to college after I left British Rail so that I could get educational qualifications to add to the mix. I attended Brooklands Technical College and got an RSA Book-keeping qualification and RSA Communications certificate in the final examinations.

 

I got into the Inland Revenue because I had at least two Ordinary Levels and later I admitted to having five O Levels so they promoted me to Tax Officer. Later on I did specialist work with Repayments and I did some Institute of Taxation study.

 

At that stage I was 36; I spent the next 5 years trying to get into college/university and in 1992 was accepted. This point I really regard as the part of a life-changing situation. I had moved away from London and had embarked upon a BA(Hons) Accounting degree at Southampton Institute.

 

Those five years before going on to the degree course involved getting most of an AAT qualification (1986-1987). I had a significant amount of challenge trying to convince the Prof in charge of Accounting at Southampton Institute that I would be a suitable candidate but he did give in at the end of the interview and allow me to do the course.

 

The point is that I could have only included in the book about my degree but then people would want to know how I got there; in every autobiography there has to be a causal link between one event and the other. Otherwise it becomes a bit of nonsense.

 

A lot of the stuff that I did in London and the jobs that I did led to my change of life circumstances. The case I make is I had embarked upon a distinct change of course in my life leading to my place at Southampton Institute. That process started when I embarked upon learning accounts at British Rail. I could see that this would be very useful in the future.

 

As I said before, you have to show the causal link between your occupations in an autobiography otherwise it just becomes a series of disjointed stories.

 

If we go back even further than that, I had a lot of administrative experience gained at school. You will have read that I was secretary of the sixth form committee and editor of the House newsletter. My mother had got me a typewriter at the age of 14 and I had learned to type on it. My Dad got me another machine later. I used to type all my assignments for school whereby most other pupils were still writing theirs.

 

After school I got a job with Inner London Education Authority but before that I had copy typing jobs with many other people, Knight Frank and Rutley, Paymaster General, etc. When I left ILEA I got a copy typing and secretarial job with the Ministry of Works working for the top brass in the building inspectorate.

 

I continued to do administrative work for committees when I was at teacher training college and in the interval (summer vacations) I got temp jobs at famous employers such as Granada Group Ltd where I met Lord SB and other notables. I had a head for administrative work.

 

It was not such a question of getting lucky breaks (full formation) but of building up skills when and where I could so that I could get work. Eventually after years of work I got into something much bigger, the attempt to get a degree.

 

There’s always someone who can’t stand the fact that people are successful; I had plenty of that from my friends in Surbiton, one or two I especially remember said that I would never get anywhere and they carried on saying that despite the fact that I got nearer and nearer my goal. They could not stand the fact that I was changing.

 

My university years, both with Southampton Institute (1992-1995) and the Open University (2003-2012) gave me the ammunition with which to write properly; you have to write properly if you are doing academic writing, you really do not have any other choice.

 

When I was with the Institute I must have done at least 22 assignments and at the Open University another 20. Academic writing has to be right and it has to be properly sourced. I am glad to say that I got really good marks in almost all my assignments with both universities.

 

That brings me up to the present day, how come I wrote my autobiography? The answer that readily comes to mind is because all down the years since I was 14 that is exactly the kind of thing that I was training for all down the years. That and many memories of what I had been doing since I was at secondary school and the making of connections between events.

 

Tell your reader what the connections are; don’t let them guess. It isn’t a surprise how you got to where you are today. Save the surprises for the novels which you are going to write. The autobiography should be a series of connected events. Mine is not always but there is a pretty straight-forward line between then and now.

 

I hope your autobiography is successful and please don’t forget to make the connections between things. Don’t spring fully formed on to the page, otherwise the poor reader will be in a state of having to suspend belief.