A Love Letter to the Memoir Writer

On old attitudes and dictates that have nothing to do with art

Today, I’m thinking about Karina, a lovely and kind woman in one of my Studio classes who is hard at work on her memoir. But these days, it seems her memoir is working on her.

There was a moment during the workshop that I was near tears with, and for, Karina. I felt such appreciation and admiration for her efforts, and how she had the courage to sharing the fruit of those efforts with the class.

For the rest of the week, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and realized I needed to write this post because it’s important to say it: Anyone who agrees to write a memoir is brave beyond measure. In part, this is true because of the agreement itself, but also because of the world we live in at this time.

The world we live in at this time:

We’ve all been at that reading. The one where our fellow memoirist clears their throat, steps forward to the podium, and shares with us the graphic details of their sex life. Or molestation. Or domestic abuse.

We’ve all cringed that cringe. We've all felt, I’m so sorry this happened to you, but maybe a roomful of strangers eating dubious cheese cubes is not the place. We’ve all walked up after the reading and said, “Wow, that was so brave.”

And sometimes we’ve been that author. Possibly oblivious, or possibly aware that the room has gone quiet in a not-good way and only our workshop leader is making supportive, professional eye contact.

~ From Seven Drafts by Allison K. Williams

The subtext of shame, of judgement, of “I know better than you about these things” is palpable in these paragraphs (to me, at least) and I have found this subtext in the larger world of teachers, agents, editors, publishers, and critics.

With all due respect, this kind of belief misses the mark.

First, the three paragraphs above seem to start at a book reading and end at a writer’s workshop (how many workshop leaders attend a book reading and would be known to the other cringers?) The point being, don’t share your work (and feelings) with anyone who might cringe other than your therapist which is supported by this next bit of advice from Ms. Williams to the memoir writer: “Remember that therapy gets your feelings out and lets you process.”

This is an old fashioned notion called “compartmentalization.” I challenge that notion because I have yet to meet one therapist who has a clue about how to integrate experience into a literary creation. I also know from my own experience that “getting my feelings out” in therapy is not the end of the phenomenon of emotion. We are feeling creatures with beating hearts 24-7. Feelings are like the wind, and the rain. They come. They go. Often without our comprehension or understanding or control, even with years of therapy at our backs.

If we all waited until our weekly session, we’d go insane.

For anyone doing this work like the fantastic writers I see every week to include Karina, Cindi, Doug, Marnie, Linda, Laurel, Susan, Julia, Cloie, Joe, Sarah, Skylark, Amanda, Kristi, April, Amy, Jeanne, Michele, John, Kelsi, Saraphina, Brenda and Tracey (all who currently study at the Studio and work their butts off while often also doing years of therapy, thank you very much), I can say that it is true (as Williams’ also writes), that “Memoir brings out the reader’s feelings and inspires them to personal growth,” but not in the first, second, tenth, or even 100th draft.

Any memoir writer knows that if they expect to get anywhere on this journey, they are going to have to bring tons of pages to workshop (and to the podium) that might make certain people cringe. That cringe and the shaming judgments that follow have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the memoir writer and the fullness of her process.

The problem, as I see it, is basic human compassion.

Compassion = being with what is.

And, truly, I don’t mean to pick on Williams as much as I want to call out how she, and her “chop chop, take that to therapy, and don’t make us cringe” attitude toward the memoir writer is the same one that countless writing teachers in numerous large and small programs pass along. The result is that the writer of memoir finds herself is in a perpetual tuck, terrified of the judgments others will heave her way when she has the audacity to share her work.

Enough of that.

Enough.

The Agreement of the Memoir Writer

The memoirist agrees to turn back and face the most complex, the most challenging, and the most painful events of her life and re-live them through careful scene writing that includes all the senses. In doing this work, the memoir writer brings her current lived wisdom to that experience of the past. It is a meeting of the “you” from the past with the “you” in the now and the merging of the two in an alchemy of transformation.

Physicists tell us you cannot have a single thought without it instantly impacting everything else in the universe. Sit with that for a second, then turn to the memoir writer again and cringe. I dare you.

Or better, ask yourself what harms the universe, your fellow human, and yourself more—calling an honest accounting “cringe-worthy” and thinking, “Man, you might not have wanted to share that here.” Or being “with” a writer who has agreed to meet herself and her deepest wound via art and then share with her fellow human beings?

In every moment, we have choices. We can chose compassion, understanding, patience, a willingness to be with another or even to look within ourselves and examine the cringe and see that it has more to do with us than anyone else. Or we can continue with the norms of compartmentalization, of expecting people to be further along than they are, and of harshly judging artists who don’t reach an ideal benchmark of expectation.

To all memoir writers out there, I honor and thank you for your work. You represent the three to five percent of the population willing to turn to the darkness within and bring it to the light. Every day you sit down and put your hands to the keyboard, and type a few more words of “truth” is a day we are all enriched.

Thank you.

There is a saying that goes: Pearls before swine. Maybe the point of this entire post has more to do with trying to help you—dear memoir writer—uncurl from that tuck of fear and shame and to hold your head a little higher so you can pick your audience a little more carefully.

And if you find yourself in a community of people who don’t get what you are doing, and hold you to the outrageous and impossible standards I wrote about above, leave and find a better community that works from love, not judgement.

💘, Jennifer