From the time I started the memoir it's like someone somewhere was watching and wanted me to *not* write a balanced story. What's up with that. Long story short, it looks like some unpleasant facts are making it into the memoir if I like it or not.
But what to do?
I know it's not libel if the facts are true, but still... is there a way to deal with these things? I'm trying to keep the parties involved out of it besides me. But at the same time I don't have a very common name. (In fact in an internet search I was the only one out there...)
Anyone have ideas?
The memoir is on adoption. I have two pot-smoking hippie Jews who went to a Unitarian Universalist church for ten years so they could listen to the choir, but ended up more Catholic parents. My mom is now acting more and more emotionally abusive lately making hard for me to deal with it since she's attacking my birth heritage.
My question isn't what to do. It's more what to do once you discover you have to write it into the memoir. How do you deal with writing such things? And dealing with the emotional impact, etc. Most memoir writing books talk about how glorious your memoir will be since it's filled with fuzzy happy memories. But I need advice on the other side of the coin too. Because I'm having trouble with sorting it out, etc.
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Telling someone you're a writer is like telling them you're an obsessive compulsive bipolar schizophrenic that goes to AA meetings once a week.
50,451 / 50,000
Dic 12, 2007 - 21 09
Kimberly, your post reminds me of a few books. One is Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs where he describes growing up with his bipolar (manic) mother and his rather bizarre but so-called normal adopted family. The book was made into a movie in 2006. (Honestly--how often do we hear of people happily munching away on doggie kibble while watching television? And these were the "normal" people?)
Another memoir that is definitely not full of "fuzzy happy memories" is that by Frank McCourt: Angela's Ashes. He begins the book by writing: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." He spends the rest of the book describing a miserable and poverty-filled childhood, but in a way that is both touching and dramatic.
You could also disguise or blend your memoirs within a work of fiction. I haven't read it yet, but a book called The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts apparently combines the author's story and her family's story in both factual and fictional form. My father wanted me to write his biography that way, and I really didn't understand what he meant until recently.
So, please don't let your concerns stop you from writing your memoirs as you wish. They don't need to be balanced, whatever that is. As writers we all have our own unique lives, experiences, and voices. We are allowed to have our own unique slant and view on life.
And I wouldn't worry about how people react to seeing themselves in print for two reasons. First--you haven't finished the memoirs yet. Second--they are therefore not published yet.
Instead, just take one thing at a time, one day at a time. Focus on just writing for now and, in my very humble opinion, just let it take you wherever it wants to go. At the very least, write the first draft without worrying about any of that. You can always consider these legal and family issues once you get into the editing process.
Not sure if any of that helped or even answered your question, so... "just take what you need and leave the rest"
Astrid's Tone
57,563 / 50,000
Dic 21, 2007 - 14 17
Thanks Tone.. what I was more concerned about is getting it out though and not distancing oneself from the events by using a soapbox... The actual physical writing of it is difficult. So are there tricks to get around this so I don't look like a wreck while writing it?
----------Telling someone you're a writer is like telling them you're an obsessive compulsive bipolar schizophrenic that goes to AA meetings once a week.