Writing a Memoir
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Memoir
I wanted to write my story. It was that simple. I felt driven by this desire for a very long time. It wasn’t until I was twenty eight that I bought me a computer and a typing tutorial and began the task of putting my words to paper. (Journals don’t count.)This turned out to be much more difficult than I realized when the notion of a book struck my mind. Aside from learning to type and taking a few online grammar courses I took up reading memoirs. I read waiting to be inspired; to read a book that was similar to the one I needed to tell, but I ended up disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I read some fantastic memoirs along the way, including Angela’s Ashes, Blackbird and Finding Fish but I was left wanting. Ultimately it was another person’s story and I was no closer to my own than before.
About this time someone recommended a book by Margaret Atwood titled A Handmaid’s Tale. Before I finished this book, (a piece of compelling fiction by the way) I began writing my own book, the first sheepish attempt. It was fiction that freed me to write my story. Novels were so bold, taking risks and telling stories that demanded the reader to sit up straight and pay attention. While memoirs were bogged down with the passage of time, one event unfolding after another in linear fashion. I could almost hear the clock ticking in the background as I read to reach the finish line. The only exception was Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. He performed some magic that I could not discover by mere reading, therefore a magic I could not duplicate.
When writing my memoir I asked myself continuously, what is the truth? I don’t believe I ever discovered that answer wholly but the book itself became the journey to uncover truth that was inside of me; truths that I had hidden from myself. The events in the book all indeed happened. I wouldn’t fictionalize an event to portray a truth but the truth must be in the event. I needed a theme, something that would corral my memories and force them to be sorted and arranged.
Throughout my book the concept of running away presents itself in many forms most obviously in the preface and in the epilogue. Why do we run from pain? What are different ways in which people run away? Does running away ever produce the desired result? Sometimes we run toward something and other times we are running away from something. All these questions were asked and never answered, for who wants the answer when the question is enough?
I did not know in advance which stories would surface, I didn’t know how I was going to end it or what climactic experience would emerge from the dusty pages of the past, I only knew that it would. I was surprised at every turn. I was delighted with the humor that arose out of the pain; humor that I didn’t know was there until I began the excavation. I laughed spontaneously and cried unexpectedly at the smallest provocation. I hoped the reader would also be surprised and laugh or cry when it was least expected.
The book was written in the present tense. I wanted to convey a sense of immediacy and timelessness. The passage of time contained within the moment, so that the moments unfolded in the here and now. I hoped the reader would grow up right along with the little girl making their own unique discoveries along the way and the child separated from others by a pane of glass would finally know she was not alone.
When the book was completed it had been six long years. My story was written. Except it wasn’t and never would be. Memories cannot truly be known, written or documented but only hinted at, viewed through the fuzzy lens of time. But I had told a story and I could continue telling stories tilled from the soil of my past and my experiences and all of them sprinkled with equal amounts of truth and fiction. And perhaps somehow someway my story is known through all the words that have been written and all the words that will be written.
Perhaps not.