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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Some of us are the designated rememberers,” The Death of Santini author Pat Conroy told me. “That’s why memoir interests us—because we’re the ones who pass the stories.”
Sue Monk Kidd said that writing memoir is “a dance between being true to my need to write authentically and my responsibility to those around me not to cross over into their private hearts and extract something that doesn’t belong to me.”
I feel free of the past in a way I never dreamed I could be; I also feel as if I understand it. More than a year after the book was written, I have a sense of peace I’ve never felt before, a feeling of comfort in my own skin.
If I’d rather wear veils, I should write fiction. I write out of the sure knowledge that the more honest I am, the freer I am, and the freer I am, the happier I am.
as Anaïs Nin said, one life, deeply examined, ripples out to touch all other lives.
For me, writing memoir is an effort to examine that place where the personal and the political become one; where you understand something because it’s personal to you but you also then begin to understand the politics that connect your struggle to the struggles of other people. You recognize yourself as part of a whole.
I began to think that some of us are the designated rememberers. Why do we remember? I don’t know. But I think that’s why memoir interests us—because we’re the ones who pass the stories.
“When the book comes out, and you read it, you need to remember that it’s some version of the truth, even though I’m telling you right now it’s probably not going to be yours.”
What you can tell the people who appear in your writing.
Memoirs hurt people. Secrets hurt people. The question to ask yourself is, if you tell your story, will it do enough good to make it worth hurting people?
Some people who review memoirs don’t discuss craft in the books at all. Many of them simply discuss your personality and the way you present yourself. So I’m always anticipating that.
I will compromise to a certain extent to take into consideration other people’s feelings, but I will not be silenced. I think once you commit to a subject, some passion has driven you to it and that passion eventually calms your fears. I never censor myself while I’m writing. I remind myself that I don’t have to publish everything I write. If you write the most honest first draft you can, I think that opens some pathways to better writing.
