Interrogating Your Memories
A new piece of memoir drops in The Rumpus today
The Voices on Addiction column in The Rumpus has just published my non-fiction narrative, “Dodging Rocks.”
This was not an easy piece of memoir to write, or to put out into the world at large. Through most of last year, I went through a long series of emails with the perceptive and tenacious Kelly Johnson, who kept rejecting the story, but kept encouraging me to rewrite ('“We are very interested in the story or we would not have provided feedback, something we rarely do.”) I went through several title changes (“This Story is My Confession” to “Dodging Rocks” to “The After,” and then finally back to “Dodging Rocks”), and four full rewrites before it was accepted.
The path to publication came not from writing the story better (whatever that means), but instead from writing more honestly. I picked up the phrase “interrogating your memories” while reading publications that print memoir, and while I don’t know where exactly it came from (probably from one of the countless publications selling write-your-own-memoir advice; I think of that industry as Big Memoir), it hit paydirt somewhere within my not-particularly-reliable short term memory, and stuck.
Writing memoir gives you the space to sit down inside a memory, to really hunker down and look at the details. It allows you to take a second look at any of the easy narratives you told yourself about what was happening. It lets you throw away the distractions, and drill down to a more accurate understanding of actual events.
I cut out anything I felt too sentimental, too flippant, too emotionally manipulative, or too artificially dramatic. This wasn’t easy, and often it was uncomfortable. I discarded any details that veered away from the main narrative. I tried very hard not to cherry-pick which emotions I was feeling for literary effect, and to instead describe as accurately as possible my mental landscape. I focused on behavior over emotion. I abandoned many of my easy literary tricks.
In short, I told the truth in as simple and truthful a fashion as the story allowed.
It took months to land the ending. Everything I wrote tried to tie up events with a nice attractive bow. It surprising how strong the impulse to end a memoir with an unrealistic hope or a slightly fudged memory, like the need for a satisfying ending is hardwired into our storytelling, fiction or non-fiction. Months of writing took me to a place where my last few paragraphs balanced realistic hopes, probable outcomes, and a carefully optimistic conclusion.
I learned a lot writing this, and hope you will learn something from it as well.
Peace.