COMPOSING A LIFE STORY

“There are advantages in having access to multiple versions of your life story…It can be very difficult to
recognize the ways in which one situation or event in your life is linked to others. When you are able to see
multiple levels of changes and consistency, you are empowered to make your own decisions” (207).
—Mary Catherine Bateson, “Composing a Life Story”

In “Composing a Life Story,” Mary Catherine Bateson describes two different narratives that are very popular
in our culture: the “prefigured narrative,” and the “conversion narrative.” Below are her definitions of these
terms:

The prefigured narrative:

“One of the stories that we, as a culture, respond to is the story in which the hero or heroine’s end is
contained in the beginning. For example, there is a film about Henry Ford that I happened to see recently on
television. In one scene, he sees his first horseless carriage as a little boy and falls in love with it. In other
words, you have an episode in childhood that prefigures all that is to come. Think about how many
biographies you have read in which the baby who grew up to be a great violinist loved lullabies, or loved
listening to the radio: stories about talent that was visible from the very beginning” (212).

The conversion narrative:

“It’s a simple plot. Lives that in reality have a lot of zigzags in them get reconstrued into before-and-after
narratives with one major discontinuity. One very interesting example of this is the Confessions of St.
Augustine, which tells the story of his life before and after his conversion to Christianity. The narrative
structure requires that he depict himself before conversion as a terrible sinner, that he devalue all that he did
before he was converted, and that he dredge up sins to talk about so that he can describe a total turnaround”
(212).

Claiming discontinuity
In addition, here are some other interesting and useful things that Bateson asks us to think about:

“One person told me that there had been so much discontinuity in her life that it wasn't hard to think of a
discontinuous version, but it was painful to tell it. I think that is a problem many people have. Because our
society has preferred continuous versions of stories, discontinuities seem to indicate that something is wrong
with you. A discontinuous story becomes a very difficult story to claim” (211).

“That's something that young people need to hear: that the continuous story, where the whole of a person's
life is prefigured very early on, is a cultural creation, not a reflection of life as it is really lived” (213).

As a culture, do we privilege continuous or discontinuous narratives? Why might that be? And why might
Bateson think young people need to hear that continuous stories are cultural creations?
 EXTENDED EXERCISE: COMPOSING A DIS/CONTINUOUS LIFE
Below is a series of connected writing exercises. As a whole, this activity invites you to use your creative thinking skills
and creative writing techniques to reflect on your own life, and to begin building a “life story” of sorts that focuses on
one specific aspect of your identity (for example, your life as a student, your life as a mother, your life as a teacher, etc.)
Not only does this exercise keep your “creative muscle” in shape, but it’s also a very useful tool for you in making
meaning of one part of your identity/life.
Just follow along with the exercises, step by step. Don’t worry about doing anything right/wrong, just do your best. You
will not be graded on your skills with craft in this exercise, so you can focus more on the real purpose of the exercise.
This exercise is NOT about cranking out a high quality piece of creative writing, it’s about using creative techniques to
make meaning of your life as a creator.

Narrative Exercise: Two Ways to Compose Your Life Story

The prefigured narrative hinges on an image or event that foreshadows and encapsulates the main focus of
the narrative. Can you find such an image/event in your own life? Reflect on the past experiences you’ve had
as a ___, from your childhood to the present. (For example, your past experiences as a woman, as an African-
American, as a philosopher, as a nurse, as a basketball player, etc.—choose one aspect of your own identity to
focus on.) See if you can locate an image or event that prefigures your main interests as a ___ today, and jot
down a few notes describing the image/event. Avoid writing about the image/event, or explaining its
significance—just get the image/event itself on the page.

The conversion narrative hinges on a moment of disruption that neatly divides the narrative into a “before-
and-after” story. Can you find such a moment in your own life? See if you can locate a moment from your past
that captures a significant moment of change, or conversion, when you first began to understand your identity
as a ___ or your interests/passions in ___. This may not necessarily be a dramatic moment, such as the event
that made you realize you didn’t want to be an astronaut after all, but a sculptor. It may be a seemingly small
shift, such as the moment you realized your real passion was not for teaching high school history, but high
school English. Whatever the moment is, jot down a brief description of it.

When you’ve completed the exercise above, set it aside. Get out a fresh piece of paper for the next exercise.

Q&A Exercise Pt. 1: Creating Discontinuity

We tend to value order over disorder, continuity over discontinuity. But as creators in this course, we’ve
learned the value of “messing things up” deliberately, playing with them to see what new things we might
discover or create. That’s what the Q&A exercise is all about.

Step 1
Draw a vertical line down the middle of a piece of paper. On the left side, write down a series of questions,
and on the right side, write the answers to those questions. Questions and answers can be literal and serious,
or surreal and silly. They should pertain to your personal life in some way, though. Here’s an example from the
first time I did this exercise myself, many eons ago:

How do I go on? You just do it (chocolate helps).

What is your favorite music? I pretty much like it all.

Show me a man with a clenched fist,

and I'll show you a radical sign. That’s not even a question.

What color is the rain? It’s all clear, though “clear” isn’t clear.

What time is it? That’s not a good question.

Why do I have to do things I don’t want to do? That’s complicated. You have to take it on
a case by case basis.

Why doesn’t my computer work? Ugh. Who knows how these things work.

Where are my keys? Always in the right pocket.

Why is the grass green? Something to do with chlorophyll, or

maybe photosynthesis.

Where does my future lie? Wherever you make it, and however.

Step 2
Rearrange the questions and answers. A simple way to do this is to shift all of your questions, or all of your
answers, up or down a few spots. You could also use scissors to separate your questions/answers, and match
them up randomly. DO NOT attempt to overthink matching questions and answers. Create a rule for
rearranging questions and answers, and stick to it, no matter what the results look like. Here’s how my own
attempt looked after rearranging things:

How do I go on?
Always in the right pocket.

What is your favorite music?

Something to do with chlorophyll, or maybe photosynthesis.

Show me a man with a clenched fist, and I'll show you a radical sign.
You just do it (chocolate helps).

What color is the rain?

Wherever you make it, and however.

What time is it?

I pretty much like it all.

Why do I have to do things I don’t want to do?

That’s not even a question.

Why doesn’t my computer work?

It’s all clear, though “clear” isn’t clear.

Where are my keys?

That’s not a good question.

Why is the grass green?

That’s complicated. You have to take it on a case by case basis.
Where does my future lie?
Ugh. Who knows how these things work.

Q&A Exercise Pt. 2: Seeking Continuity

“Much of coping with discontinuity has to do with discovering threads of continuity. You cannot adjust to
change unless you can recognize some analogy between your old situation and your new situation. Without
that analogy you cannot transfer learning. You cannot apply skills. If you can recognize a problem that you've
solved before, in however different a guise, you have a much greater chance of solving that problem in a new
situation. That recognition is critical to the transfer of learning. If you create continuity by freezing some
superficial variable, the result, very often, is to create deep change…those who stay the course with their
commitments are those who are able to ride the changes and to adapt. At some fundamental level, they are
able to bridge all the superficial changes, and to say, ‘My commitment is the same commitment that brought
me here in the first place.’ They are people with an extraordinary capacity to translate” (214-15).

You’ve begun composing your life story in different ways and making a discontinuous mess of it: You divided
your present, everyday life (through the discontinuous Q&A exercise) from your past as a ___ (through the
continuous prefigured and conversion narrative moments). The next step is to seek out continuity in
discontinuity. By finishing the Q&A exercise, we’ll begin to bring together these pieces of your life to find a
common, continuous thread that binds the seeming chaos of your life together.

Follow these steps:

Underline all of the words and phrases from your questions and answers that stand out to you. Next, do the
same thing with the writing you did for the Narrative Exercise. Just focus on interesting words/phrases, and
underline them.

Now: look at all of your underlined items as puzzle pieces that can be put together in many different ways. Put
them together to create a poem. Don’t worry about rhyme, rhythm, meter, form, etc. Just focus on arranging
words/phrases/ideas on the page. Feel free to add a few words here and there, but try to stick to the things
you underlined as much as possible. Here’s an example from my own attempt at this:

Where are my keys? Why doesn’t

my computer work? What time is it?
I'm shown a radical sign—
something to do with chlorophyll, or
maybe photosynthesis.
How do these things work?

That’s a difficult question.

Wherever you form it, and however,
it’s complicated. You have to take it
on a case by case basis.
Where does my future lie? It’s pretty

much like the color of rain,

which is not even a question. It’s all clear,
though “clear” isn’t clear.
You just do it.
Show me a man with a clenched fist
always in the right,
and I’ll show you how to go on.

Title Exercise: Discovering continuity

“You might be uncomfortable with your life if it has been like the Perils of Pauline, yet many of us have lives
like that. One strategy for working with that is to make a story that interprets change as continuity. One of my
favorites was someone who said, ‘My life is like surfing, with one wave coming after another.’ He unified his
whole life with that single simile” (212).

Read through the poem you’ve begun writing. Take a second look at the Q&A fragments you haven’t used yet,
and your prefigured and conversion narrative moments. All of this writing represents something significant
about you and your life. What a mess! Given all the different fragments and ideas in this writing, it can seem
as though your life is somewhat chaotic, “random,” discontinuous. Can you see in your writing a specific
theme or idea that binds all of this writing together—an idea that is unique to you alone?

Try to capture the continuity you see in the discontinuity of your life in a simile, like the one Bateson describes
above. Fill in the blank for one of the following:
My Life as a ___ is Like ___.
My Life is Like ___.

When you think you’ve found a good simile, see how well it works as a title for your poem. Here’s my own
example:

My Life is a Good Question

Where are my keys? Why doesn’t

my computer work? What time is it?
I'm shown a radical sign—
something to do with chlorophyll, or
maybe photosynthesis.
How do these things work?

That’s a difficult question.

Wherever you form it, and however,
it’s complicated. You have to take it
on a case by case basis.
Where does my future lie? It’s pretty

much like the color of rain,

which is not even a question. It’s all clear,
though “clear” isn’t clear.
You just do it.

Show me a man with a clenched fist

always in the right,
and I’ll show you how to go on.
Share!
Post your final poem in the Composing a Life discussion forum. No need to post any explanations or anything
else, unless you’d like to.