Paul Jennings on 'Untwisted'

Untwisted is the long-awaited memoir of beloved Australian author PAUL JENNINGS. In the telling of his own tale, children's author and screenwriter Paul Jennings demonstrates how seemingly small events can combine into a compelling drama. As if assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, he puts together fragments, memories and anecdotes to reveal the portrait of a complex and weathered soul.

Honest, insightful, funny - a memoir about writing and teaching and life from one of Australia's most loved children's authors.

What prompted you to publish a memoir now, after decades of being an author? 

It sometimes seems to me that every second person I talk to at the moment is writing a memoir or autobiography. Maybe the Coronavirus lockdowns are stimulating these self-examining pieces. Even though I started writing Untwisted 10 years ago there was definitely a feeling of mortality underlying my efforts – time is running out. 

I thought that the process might be useful as a form of self-discovery. And it has been. When I had finished the last corrections in June 2020, I felt as if I was looking down at a map of my life and could see the junctions and crossroads where many options had been available. There was much to see. The silly mistakes. The hurtful words expressed and received. The motives, known and unknown. The links. The wasted energy. The triumphs. The foolish fears. The laughs. And the repressed or unacknowledged motives behind my desperate efforts to find love and acceptance. 

There was also a genuine belief that if we can honestly share our vulnerabilities and mistakes (very difficult) it can make life a little easier for others who are struggling in similar ways.

You’re most loved for your short stories, yet Untwisted is your longest piece of writing by far. What challenges did you face in tackling such an expansive work? 

There were many difficulties. Remembering the details accurately. Not wanting to hurt other people. Reporting the struggle against foes whose own problems and motives could only be guessed at. Reliving painful incidents. Not including some friends and colleagues who mean a great deal to me. How to represent myself honestly. And, the Holy Grail for any biographer – how to make the book interesting without straying from the truth.

The book covers some darker periods of your life, including your battles with mental health. How did it feel putting these feelings down on the page?

There is always a possibility that the demons you have buried will come to life again if you visit their graves. I didn’t want to face them once more, but it is useless to deny that they existed. 

Although I still fought the desire for anonymity regarding my mental health issues. I did write about them in The Nest, a book for teenagers. But that was truth clothed in fiction. Untwisted is self-revelation and contains details that most of my friends and some of my family don’t know about. I do feel exposed and vulnerable. 

Untwisted jumps back and forth between different periods of your life. Why did you structure the book in this way?

All my early efforts at writing this memoir were failures and went into the bin. It was only last year that I felt finally felt I had found a way forward. I decided to write the book like a novel rather than a recitation of events. I shamelessly seeded clues and inserted cliff-hangers and flashbacks in the fashion of a movie or a crime novel. It was difficult because a biography is told and not invented.

It also dawned on me as I was seeking a voice for the book, that the background one might have in specialist areas can be interesting to people who are unaware of the social rules and behaviours involved. John Mortimer set much of old Rumpole’s life in a barristers’ office. The jealousies and struggles within were often more interesting than the actual crime cases he solved. I drew on my own environments in special education, speech pathology, teacher education and publishing to add colour and anecdotes in parts of the book which might need a bit of light relief or humour. This required me to group incidents and themes rather than stick to a strict chronological order.

In addition, because I was aware that so many people are involved in writing memoirs at the moment, I thought that I would confess that the genre was new to me and pause on the way through my story to discuss the problems I was encountering. This of course meant inserting the present into the past at various stages.

Your stories usually have a message or theme to take away at the end. What would you like readers to take away from Untwisted? 

Socrates is reported to have said, ‘An unexamined life is not worth living.’ I don’t believe that everyone needs to write a memoir. But we should all try to reflect on our own motivations, beliefs and actions in the hope that we can keep improving right up until the end of the story.  

Untwisted by Paul Jennings is published by Allen & Unwin. 

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Paul Jennings has written more than one hundred stories and sold over 10 million books. Since the publication of Unreal! in 1985, readers all around the world have loved his stories. The first two series of the top-rating TV series 'Round the Twist' were based on Paul's popular short story collections and he received two Awgie awards forscreenwriting episodes. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to children's literature in 1995, was awarded the prestigious Dromkeen Medal in 2001 and was made a Fellow of Monash University in 2010. In 2019 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Children's Book Council of Australia. He lives in Warrnambool with his partner, comedian, actor and author Mary-Anne Fahey.