There’s a misconception about memoir writers in general that bugs me. It’s that we all write to process our pain. Here’s the truth, though: many of us, perhaps most of us, write for the same reason everyone else writes: to share a story. To make people laugh and cry. To offer up a world that’s different from the one in which our readers live. To take people away from their own problems for a little while.
We write because we love art and because we believe our stories are art. Or at least that we can construct them artfully.
We write because some particular story won’t let us alone. It tugs at us like a whiny two-year-old wanting to be noticed. It needs to be manifested, fleshed out, given life. Novelists often say that their stories and characters choose them, not the other way around. Memoirists are no different. Our stories claw at our hearts, wanting out.
As I worked on my third memoir these past couple of years, I contacted two men who had been intimately involved in the subject about which I was writing. I told them I was writing a book and would love to hear their perspective on what happened in our childhood. I wasn’t prepared for their reaction.
“This is utter bullshit,” K said. “Do psychoanalysis. No one needs another shitty book out there that tells us all how damaged you were.”
“I can only offer you my sympathy,” added B. “The rest of us have moved on.”
I responded kindly, calmly, and apologetically, assuring them that I had changed names and details to protect their family. Their anger, however, seemed odd to me. I could talk and write about my childhood without animosity. I had indeed long since moved on and forgiven the people involved. I understood the circumstances of the story in a way that I was sure these men did not. Why were they unable to talk reasonably and calmly about this when it was supposedly I who hadn’t moved on?
Yes, writing a memoir - if it involved pain - takes you back into that pain. Deeply. Memoir is a slice of life, centered around a theme, so memoirists plunge into that slice, examine it, flip it over, let it sizzle from another angle. It scorches us. We even lug it around with us, although we do so for the same reason as other genre writers: so we can figure out what happened next, what emotions were involved, and how we can improve the art of our storytelling.
Like all authors, memoirists are headed towards redemption. Even when in the end there’s little to no forgiveness or understanding, to write a book means that the author has found a way to move on in a healthy manner. That’s redemption. I was fortunate that forgiveness came to me decades before I began writing. But although I hadn’t anticipated it, I also reached an entirely new level of understanding as I researched and reflected and wrote.
I moved on from childhood traumas many, many years ago. And now I want to share that story of how I did it, to make you feel with me, to laugh and cry, to plunge you into my darkness and lift you again into the light, to share my family’s humanity. Thanks for coming along on my journey.
