Let’s Never Speak of This Again by Megan Williams

Let’s Never Speak of This Again by Megan Williams

Winner of the Text Prize (Published by Text)

Guest author post by Megan Williams about Let’s Never Speak of This Again for Joy in Books at PaperbarkWords blog:

When I’m bored, I make up stories in my head to entertain myself.  Usually, they’re just little backstories to pass the time, like why the person sitting across from me in the waiting room reads a text message and frowns, or why my neighbour on the plane smiles when we hit turbulence and (in my humble opinion) it’s clearly time to panic.  One day, while I was walking along the beach and there was no one else around, I started making up a story about two friends.  They were old friends, but they’d recently drifted apart.  Just when one friend started to question their friendship, something tragic happened to the other one.  That’s as far as I got.

When covid spread and we went into lockdown, I decided to try writing.  It’s something I’d wanted to do for ages, but always had a million and one excuses (Not enough time! Too many books to read etc).  I thought if I don’t give it a go now, I probably never will.  I kept coming back to the story about the two friends.  Despite my 18^th birthday being a distant memory, I didn’t feel ‘adult’ enough to write about being a grown up. But maybe, just maybe, I’d had enough time to reflect and could write about being a teenager.  And so the friends became high school students. 

I’m not very creative and the thought of writing like a ‘pantser’ makes my palms sweat and my mind instantly go blank.  But I also have a strongly developed inner critic who can dismiss any outline as a terrible, terrible idea.  To get around this conundrum, I would mull over short scenes in my mind until I was satisfied enough to write them down.  Gradually, the story took shape and the following themes emerged: 

Friendship – I’ve always been drawn to stories about friends and will listen to a podcast about paint drying if the hosts have good banter.  I became hooked on a podcast about parenting multiples with disabilities and additional needs (the wonderful Too Peas in a Podcast), not for the parenting advice or to expand my horizons (which it did), but because I loved listening to Mandy and Kate crack each other up the way only close friends can.  There’s nothing more glorious or life-affirming than laughing with a friend and, on the flip side, there’s nothing lonelier than feeling misunderstood by someone who usually ‘gets’ you.  When I started writing Let’s Never Speak of This Again, the only thing I knew for sure was that it was about two girls who were good friends. 

Grief – In the years before I started writing, I unintentionally found myself reading lots of books about grief, including Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Lech Blaine’s Car Crash: A Memoir and Leigh Sales’ Any Ordinary Day.  These reminded me that despite being such a common experience, grief remains very personal, complicated and often lonely.  Reflecting on my teenage years, my experience with grief was always one step removed – it was friends, not me, who lost a parent.  Through a perfect storm of inexperience, immaturity and self-doubt, I convinced myself that if these friends wanted to talk about it, they would.  I’m further embarrassed to add that I did nothing to make that a likely scenario.  Since then, I’ve inevitably been walloped by grief myself and received unexpected, life altering news.  I’ve also found myself saying I’m fine when someone asks how I’m going because I don’t want to bring the mood down or I’m otherwise not ready to talk about what happened.  I consider myself extremely lucky to have friends who’ve continued to check in and be there for me.  I think I subconsciously gave the protagonist, Abby, the kindness of my friends and explored what might have happened if teenage me had been brave enough to push through the awkwardness and ask my friends how they really were.   

Dementia – I was very close to my grandma, and over a long period of time, I witnessed dementia take away all her warmth and quirks and flaws until she was just as unrecognisable to me as I was to her.  I think writing this book was a way for me to process what happened.  I also wanted to acknowledge that living with dementia is hard, as is loving someone with dementia.   

Sport – On a lighter note, I grew up inhaling books and playing as much sport as possible.  There wasn’t much crossover between the two – I occasionally came across books about sport, but rarely as a subplot.  I only realised writing this just how much I missed sport once I left school.  The netball story line in Let’s Never Speak of This Again probably reflects this void, which I’ve otherwise done my best to fill by watching documentaries like The Last Dance, Cheer and Tour de France: Unchained.  I also think that sport is a good way to explore success.  Even in competitive sport, which seems to have the clearest goal – winning – achieving it isn’t always satisfying.  Give me the adrenaline rush of a tough, closely fought battle over an easy win any day.

I didn’t set out to write any particular story, and at no point did I think to myself, I’m writing a story about dementia or I’m writing a story about sport.  But with the benefit of hindsight, I’m not surprised that these topics found their way into Let’s Never Speak of This Again. 

Let’s Never Speak of This Again at Text Publishing