“Everything that gets into your writing has gone through your mind in some form. You may mix and match and create new chimeras, but the primary materials have to have travelled through your head.”

Atwood acknowledges the importance of time, place, and personal experience for all writers. By arguing that all writing is a reflection of some part of the author’s life, Atwood introduces her theme of Transforming Real-Life Experiences into Fiction.

“Inside the dinner jackets and fancy party dresses they could assume at will, they held the reserve and skepticism of the country mice; yet they had the curiosity of the city mice too. They could switch back and forth between country and city with hardly any effort, or so it appeared from the outside. My elder brother and I were similar hybrids.”

Atwood discusses her parents, Carl and Margaret, and how they held onto their Nova Scotia roots while also appreciating their new life in Toronto. This quotation helps to explain Atwood’s ease in both Toronto and the extremely remote forests of northern Ontario and Quebec. More broadly, her description of herself as a “hybrid” develops her depiction of identity as multiple, suggesting that this was true even before she became a writer.

“The little boy who’d thrown the ice chunk was sent by his mother to apologize. ‘I’m sorry I hit Peggy in the eye,’ he said. ‘I meant to hit Harold.’ It’s useful to know that you’re sometimes receiving rage and anger intended for a different target.”

Atwood recalls being hit with a chunk of ice by a mischievous neighbor when she was just a toddler. Her delivery of this memory captures her typical wit and humor. This lighthearted tone never disappears, but as the memoir progresses, it is increasingly mingled with darker moments as Atwood recounts more serious episodes of violence (e.g., the bullying she experienced as a girl).

“Around this time I began to write. My first opus was Rhyming Cats, a collection of poems: a couple of them were rhymes I’d heard, the others original compositions. It was called Rhyming Cats because I was obsessed with cats but was not allowed to have one; in the woods, a cat would run away and be eaten by something. True enough. But a vacuum in my life.”

Atwood recalls being an eager student and an early reader. As a competent reader by grade one, she began to write, focusing on her passion for cats. This passage reveals that writing came as a natural form of expression for Atwood, who always had a gift with words. It also suggests writing’s therapeutic value; Atwood’s tone is self-deprecating as she notes the “vacuum” in her childhood, but she later uses writing to process the difficulties of her adult life.

“Anyone who thinks that females are perfect, that girls are nicer, that every sadistic thing girls and women do is the fault of ‘the patriarchy,’ has either forgotten a lot or never been a nine-year-old girl at school. The desire for power is a human constant, though the ways of demonstrating this desire change according to circumstances.”

Atwood lambasts what she considers simplistic interpretations of feminism, instead arguing that girls and women have their own power struggles and versions of “sadistic” behavior. Her discussion of being bullied in grade four contextualizes the view of human nature and its desire for power that is often reflected in her novels. By discussing her own experiences, the author adds to her theme of transforming real-life experiences into fiction.

“But in Canada, in the 1950s, if you wrote poetry, you weren’t liable to be branded as either a Commie subversive or—by the ultra-left—a capitalist stooge: instead, you were likely regarded as a harmless lunatic; or worse, as ridiculous. That is, if you were regarded at all. Nevertheless, I embarked upon poetry. I don’t know why, but I do know when.”

Atwood explains that, in her home country, poets were not taken seriously.. Her lack of explanation as to why she pursued poetry suggests that she had an innate desire to express herself with words (and enough self-confidence to pursue a somewhat stigmatized profession), but it also echoes her broader depiction of identity, implying that there are aspects of who she is that remain mysterious even to her.

“Who was I, what was I doing there, what was happening? Asking myself such questions was how I spent my first year at university. My marks were indifferent. I lost my scholarship, as I’d feared I would.”

Atwood reveals that her first year in university was not a great success. This passage reflects the memoir’s project of humanizing a well-known figure; it shows that in spite of her talents, Atwood still socially and academically struggled at the beginning of university.

“Did we cover the doorknob with shaving foam, then tiptoe outside, then bang on the door? Were there shouts and curses as the boys leapt up and tried to put on their shoes, only to find them stuck to the floor and full of frogs? Did I hasten back to my cabin and pretend to be asleep? All of this happened as I have said.”

Atwood recalls summer pranks at a camp where she worked as a camp counsellor. This passage invites the reader into Atwood’s life as a young woman, showing the silly side of her personality behind her literary legend persona.

“I was off and running—spattering the Victoria College literary magazine with poems, stories, and illustrations, while searching out small literary journals in the college library. I’d type up my poems with two fingers on my mother’s portable Remington and send them off to magazines, with a self-addressed stamped envelope. Then I’d get them back with curt notes saying they weren’t suitable for the magazine’s needs at this time. ‘At this time’ was so encouraging. Maybe next time?”

Atwood recalls the early days of her career as a poet, which she pursued while attending university at Victoria College, Toronto. By recalling her many rejections from publishers and the small triumphs of having her first work published, the author continues to chip away at her reputation as a literary giant. For instance, her misinterpretation of a polite but formulaic rejection hints at her naivete as a young writer.

“We didn’t anticipate ‘careers’: six-figure advances, huge sales, all of that. We were told we should leave—go where art was appreciated. Instead, we dug in and began to build the infrastructure that would allow us to function as writers in our own country. The generation of the 1960s was instrumental in creating the Canadian literary institutions that still exist today, from private grant programs and prizes to book tours and literary festivals. We did it not for fun, but out of need.”

Atwood explains that Canada barely had a literary scene when she first began writing. This passage reveals that she and other Canadian authors and publishers of the 1960s helped to establish the institutions that exist today. By describing how she and her colleagues collaborated out of “need,” the author takes credit for helping to establish literary infrastructure in Canada when she could have moved abroad to London or New York, where such resources were already available.

“People have asked whether we female graduate students felt pioneering, or daring, or beleaguered, or any of the virtuous feminist emotions that younger people expect us to have had. No, we did not. Second-wave feminism hadn’t happened yet. If anything, we felt like poker players. Play it as it lays, and let’s see what comes up next.”

The author recalls becoming a doctoral student at Harvard and entering its male-dominated program. As Atwood often does, she portrays herself not as a feminist icon but as a regular student and young woman who was simply trying to find the right career and life path for herself. At the same time, the simile of poker playing highlights that the choice to pursue higher education was a risky one given the era’s norms.

“First, I had a burning desire to write a novel. Time was running out—I was already twenty-three and practically senile, and I hadn’t published much of note yet, and was acutely conscious that Marie-Claire Blais (nineteen, La belle bête) and Françoise Sagan (eighteen, Bonjour tristesse) were still well ahead of me.”

Atwood reveals the anxiety she felt about her writing career in her early twenties, when she compared herself to unusually young women writers. This passage shows that while Atwood was already a published poet, she soon had greater ambitions and felt anxious to achieve them. She underscores this point by channeling a younger version of herself whose voice and attitudes she frames with light irony; at 23, she was not “practically senile,” though she might have felt so at the time.

“All this time I was writing. I wasn’t yet beginning another novel. Instead, I was writing poetry, including some that, for the first time, felt like what I came to think of as my real voice. I also wrote the beginnings of several stories, some of which I would finish. I didn’t have a typewriter with me, so this writing was in cursive. It felt like a prelude, but a prelude to what? Getting to the next week was my immediate concern. The next year or years were so far away they were invisible.”

As a young woman trying to survive on a meager budget and balance work and writing, Atwood struggled to envision her future as an author. Her habitual writing reveals her commitment to her craft and suggests that while she had periods of creative frustration and doubt, she was always a prolific poet and storyteller.

“I taught the survey course for first-years—Chaucer to T.S. Eliot in condensed whistle-stops—and grammar to engineering students, a class that took place at 8:30 a.m. in a Quonset hut left over from the Second World War. Neither of these tasks came with any instructions. It was up to me how I presented the material, how I set tests or essays, and how I graded the results. I’d never taught anything before except at White Pine as Peggy Nature, though the need to explain things clearly to seven-year-old children came in handy.”

Atwood recalls her first teaching job at the University of British Columbia, highlighting how unglamorous—and vague—her assignment was. In particular, her comparison of the work to teaching small children at camp demystifies a job often seen as rarefied. In this passage the author shows how she was thrown into the deep end of academic instruction and had to take initiative and use her creativity to succeed as an instructor.

“And it’s true: clouds of jealousy and malice began accumulating around me from that day forward, exuded mainly by other poets. Poets are not, generally speaking, a fully balanced or unenvious lot.”

After winning the Governor General’s Award for her poetry book The Circle Game, Atwood felt that her success stirred up jealousy and resentment among some of her fellow poets in Canada. In this quotation, she portrays herself as someone who has been unfairly targeted due to her commercial and critical success. This foreshadows later scuffles with critics, interviewers, and fellow writers.

“My two courses were ‘American Romantic’—Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, Whitman, and company—and ‘Victorian Literature.’ The younger students were apathetic, unwilling to talk, and not sure why they were there. The older ones—who had jobs and adult lives—were bright-eyed, inquisitive, smart, funny, and challenging. Not surprisingly, I preferred them.”

While teaching at Sir George William University in Montreal, Atwood enjoyed teaching the older students who came to evening classes. The author’s memories of life as a professor give the reader some insight into how she supported herself during her early career as a writer.

“I joined Amnesty International, which works on behalf of those who have been unjustly imprisoned for political reasons. This meant receiving the Amnesty newsletter, which made me even more worried, as it was full of accounts of summary imprisoning and torture and assassination. Out of this came—eventually—a suite of poems called Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written.”

Atwood recalls joining Amnesty International during the 1980s due to her interest in supporting human rights around the world. This membership made her increasingly aware of how people worldwide were being persecuted for their politics. This passage supports her theme of transforming real-life experiences into fiction as she connects her growing awareness about current events to her poetry work.

“I was also curious about the gendering of prose styles. In high school we’d read an essay about the masculine prose style (forceful, clear, primary-coloured, definite, strong) versus the feminine prose style (wispy, vague, pastel, indirect, weak) […] Similarly, from reading reviews I had noticed that ‘she writes like a man’ was a praise term, whereas ‘he writes like a woman’ was the opposite.”

Atwood recalls the blatant sexism common among professors and reviewers when she was a young woman. By revealing the extent of the bias that affected women writers’ work and reputations, she adds detail to her theme on Confronting Sexism as a Female Author.

“I wasn’t a substitute mother. I was not a full-time fixture. I drew on my camp counsellor experience, and styled myself as a kind of cabin supervisor, which involved cookie-baking and endless games of Monopoly, and other wholesome activities suited to the young. This is the situation revisited in the story ‘Monopoly’ in my 2006 collection, Moral Disorder.”

Atwood recalls learning how to become a stepmother to Graeme’s children, an experience that inspired her story “Monopoly.” By showing how her personal life informed her work, Atwood adds depth to her theme of transforming real-life experiences into fiction. Her discussion of how she translated past work as a camp counselor to her current circumstances also gestures toward her interest in identity and how context shapes it.

“Although the writing process felt like wading through a swamp, the effort was ultimately worth it. When I came to Alias Grace almost twenty years later, I already had a great deal of the background I would need.”

Atwood recalls the challenge of being tasked with writing Canadian history from 1815-1840 for a book called Canada’s Illustrated Heritage. While this task pushed Atwood outside of her comfort zone, she later found it immensely useful as she drew on it to inform her work Alias Grace. This passage shows Atwood’s dedication to creating realistic settings and characters, bolstering her theme of transforming real-life experiences into fiction.

“My distrust of my own novel grew. Another one was now moving in to replace the dog’s breakfast I’d been pegging away at for so long. ‘Who am I?’ asked this new book. Who, indeed?”

Atwood reveals that her most famous novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, began while she was immersed in a different, creatively frustrating project. Her personification of the book in the final lines hints at its importance to her life and career, while the questions the book poses build suspense.

“That set me thinking. Did he think women were too angelic to be con artists, or else too stupid to come up with convincing scams? I begged to differ: I had known several female con artists—women who pretended to have cancer in order to extract money from their friends, women who pretended to have credentials they lacked, women who lied, cheated, and backbit.”

Atwood recalls her friend remarking that no women are con artists, triggering a chain of memories and questions that led her to write The Robber Bride. By showing how one off-hand comment led her to create a whole new story, Atwood presents herself as a curious and endlessly creative person, continually seeking inspiration and transforming it into narrative.

“I’d set out with the idea of writing about my grandmother’s and my mother’s generations—between them, they spanned the entire tumultuous and change-ridden twentieth century, including both world wars, the advent of telephones, automobiles, film, radio, television, and the early Internet—but both of these women were too nice to be put into a novel by me.”

This passage supports the author’s theme of transforming real-life experiences into fiction. Atwood’s interest in her mother and grandmother’s generations motivated her to write The Blind Assassin, a novel set in 1930s and 1940s Ontario. By grappling with how to portray some of her mother and grandmother’s experiences without using them as specific characters, the author hints at the challenges of taking lived events and reimagining them in invented narratives.