Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

by Meredith Maran

Before I made the leap, I grew so restless. I had so much unfulfilled longing, so much pent-up creativity. I was working part-time as an RN on a pediatric unit. I had two toddlers, a husband, a brick house, and a station wagon. There’s a line of poetry from Anne Sexton that I used as a chapter epigraph in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: “One can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.” It was sort of like that. On my thirtieth birthday, I was in the laundry room when it all seemed to come to a head. I remember dumping a bunch of diapers into the machine—this was before I had the sense to splurge on disposables. I remember closing the lid, putting my hands on the washer as it started to vibrate, and thinking, I’m going to become a writer. I must do this, sink or swim. I marched right into the kitchen, where my husband was sitting with our two toddlers, who were eating their cereal, and I made my announcement, “I’m going to be a writer.” Of course, it took about five minutes before I thought, What am I doing? Of course I can’t write; I don’t know anything about writing. I know now that this internal backlash of fear is often what comes when we step out there and do something bold. But at the time I thought I must be insane.