A Theme Takes Shape

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part III

Early Snippets from College Heartbreak Become Integral to Future Work

My UCI Extension Creative Writing workshop in 2007 provided early practice for my nonexistent memoir, but it would be another seven years before I would say, “I’m writing a book.” At this stage, I didn’t believe I was capable, nor did I know what kind of book I wanted to write. But a decade after my college boyfriend broke up with me, I was still trying to piece together why, which is why I was compelled to write a vignette about him for Lesson 7 during this online class, a few details of which were later expanded into scenes and included in my manuscript; a few details of which I had forgotten until rereading them recently; and a few details I discarded when I later crafted my experiences into a cohesive whole. In this early piece, the first sentence isn’t true:

“He liked it when I was mad.” No, he didn’t. When I wrote that, I was trying to find a way into a complicated story I didn’t fully comprehend, and I was speculating about his thoughts and emotions, which were still unclear. In 2017, when I was working with an editor, he’d say something to this effect: “It doesn’t matter why he did the things he did; it only matters he did them.” This realization would have an enduring influence on my writing.

For several years, however, I would focus on the men with whom I have interacted more than I’d analyze myself, and I would always get the same workshop note: “We want to hear more about you.” Lesson 7 was no exception, but I find a few sections of that short piece striking, not because of the exact words I wrote, but how they’d become important to my later work:

For instance, “by the time his sunken skeleton stepped off the plane at LAX after a semester in Amsterdam, the red haze had become a permanent fixture in his glassy eyes. His hollow self had officially taken over.”

The Seeds That Grow

Putting aside revision at the line level, those two sentences became a seed that would grow into a published essay and more than one scene in my manuscript. I would eventually write the LAX scene, and I would write about the young, naïve woman who didn’t anticipate soon being crushed and how that would affect her future romantic decisions.

I see now how, as a burgeoning nonfiction writer, I played with snippets of ideas and segments of a larger narrative I had yet to form, like here:

“The thief could never undo removing my heart from its flimsy chain in the parking lot at Diedrich Coffee, turning it into confetti on the asphalt . . .”

This sentence screams to be fleshed out. What happened in the parking lot? What did we say to each other? What led to this very public, very unexpected breakup? How did it affect me in the grand scheme? I didn’t write the coffeehouse breakup scene for another decade, after I’d written an essay collection and was now turning those separate essays into a memoir. Why did it take so long? It doesn’t matter; the process takes as long as it takes, and it can’t be forced, which is why I think many authors’ first traditionally published books are better than their second ones. They often don’t have a deadline yet.

Forgotten Dialogue

Then there is the forgotten dialogue that takes me aback and makes me wonder if I should tweak my manuscript again. (I am determined to call it until I have another editor, but I’ve said that before.) After my college love and I were no longer together, he briefly dated his teaching assistant, an older graduate student, and she dumped him a few months into their courtship. For some reason, he felt compelled to tell me about it while it was happening:

“Remember what it was like when we were first together? That’s how it is with her.”

I recently wrote, “Oh god!” in the margin when I rediscovered this, one of the most painful things anyone has ever said to me. I had totally blocked it. One of the reasons writing a memoir is so difficult is because of our faulty memories. I often wonder how much of my past my brain has erased or stored in some inaccessible place. (So much!) I also wonder what I misremember. (So much!) I recently found an old piece I wrote about talking to a psychic at a Halloween party, a scene I included in the last chapter of my manuscript after rewriting the ending at least five times. I would have sworn when I walked into the room, the psychic said, “Do you always think this much?” but that’s now how it went down. (In this case, I did update my manuscript to reflect the more accurate version.)

In many instances, I’m grateful when I have the wherewithal to record dialogue immediately after it occurs, even if I have no idea when or if I will ever use it. That I am predisposed to do so facilitated writing more complete scenes when I was ready to write a memoir, but happening upon lines like the cruel one above, I speculate about the propensity of a memoirist to torture herself. I could have gone the rest of my life without remembering him comparing what I thought was unique and magical with a fling he had after me.

Jotting It Down in Real Time

The positive flipside of writing everything down in real time—an act I did when my life was more turbulent—is sometimes I find gems like what was scrawled on the communal whiteboard of my ex-boyfriend’s apartment in dry erase marker before cell phones the day I dropped off the mail that was forwarded to my house when he was overseas:

“Your mom wants to know where her real son is because she found you in a basket on the doorstep.”

I took solace knowing his mom was on my side, and that landline message still appears in my manuscript. What I cut post-Lesson 7, however, was the last phone call she and I ever had soon after that terrible night at the coffeehouse. We were both crying when she said, “I wish you would have stayed together. I really thought you’d get married.” While an important phone call, it didn’t fit into the manuscript. Determining what to include and what to leave out in a memoir is key—and not easy. I was unable to cram all the important events of my life into one book, nor should I have. Writing a memoir is like writing fiction in terms of structure and a narrative arc, and I was nowhere near that stage the first time I tried to write this story.

Sequence of Events and Alternate Endings

Whenever I read a memoir that follows the “then this happened, then this happened, then this happened” format without showing the deeper significance of these events and why they are strung together in this specific sequence, I want to throw it against a wall because the writer failed to make choices. Writing a memoir often requires asking, “Who cares?” I’m still not sure if I made all the right decisions about what to include in my manuscript, but I at least made them thoughtfully.

The effect of the breakup with my college boyfriend was profound, and I express so in the final paragraph of this assignment by sharing an event that happened five years later, a scene I considered expanding but never did, as it didn’t add anything new on an emotional subtext level that wasn’t already articulated in my eventual manuscript. I ultimately wrote a sufficient ending to this story; I didn’t need another one.

The alternate ending went like this: My ex was living with a new girlfriend in San Francisco, and one night my roommate and I had dinner with him in the early 2000s when we were on a road trip. He appeared content and healthy, didn’t stay long, and reopened the giant wound in my chest just by walking through the door of the restaurant:

“A few hours later, I gasped silent sobs in the bottom bunk of a woodsy Sausalito hostel, trying not to wake the woman snoring in the bed next to me. ‘Nothing will ever be okay again,’ I thought.”

Despite how untrue and bleak that thought was, in the moment I believed it. The one night I ever stayed in a hostel, I never slept. Lying in that uncomfortable bed, my roommate above me on the top bunk, I didn’t think I’d ever get over my second boyfriend. I did, of course, and in November this year I finally received the elusive closure I never expected and wrote about it for Brevity.

What the Teacher Said

My UCI Extension instructor said this about Lesson 7: “At the start of the piece you say . . . you’re angry, but the piece doesn’t feel angry, nor do I read of angry outbursts, so I’m wondering about that. Some of the metaphors and similes contrast each other, so you could probably just eliminate a few.”

I added those “angry outbursts” later and, thankfully, eliminated so many needless metaphors and similes. While this piece is a microcosm of what’s to come, a theme is already taking shape. I was working toward finding the voice that would tell this story in a more extensive, introspective way only time affords.

The Fall

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part II

A Critique of My First Workshop Essay

Welcome to How I Wrote a Memoir. If you haven’t read Part I, it’s here. Here’s Part II:

Imagine a thirty-four-year-old transplant sitting at her soon-to-be fiancé’s oak desk in a suburban home north of Atlanta, Georgia, across the street from the cul-de-sac moms who lounge in lawn chairs in the driveway chatting, while their husbands work and their toddlers tumble in the grass. In 2007, I imagine I was invisible to the neighborhood Southern ladies because I was a childless, unmarried Californian with a job. It didn’t take much to determine we had nothing in common. I waved to them, but I was never invited into their unspoken club. I was starving for authentic companionship, so I signed up for an online creative writing class through UC Irvine Extension, where I had previously spent three glorious years on campus. I needed to find my people again.

A Writer Who Doesn't Write

I didn’t have a plan for my writing. I only knew it was well past time to explore it. When I was twenty-two, I wrote in my journal, “I just want to be a writer.” Twelve years later I still wasn’t writing, a result of an incapacitating fear of failure. My cruel inner voice berated me with no supporting evidence to back up its claims: You will never be good enough. What will people think of you? Why even try?

Name That Pesky Inner Editor

Many years later, during a Hugo House class in Seattle on Mindful Writing, Anna Vodicka asked us to name our negative inner voices and tell them, “I’m not listening to you.” I named mine after my nightmare sixth-grade teacher who launched heavy objects across the room when she was angry and cussed at our parents under her breath loud enough for us to hear. During Anna’s class, I thought, “I’m not listening to you, Miss Salter.”

Back in 2007, I needed an outside party to provide deadlines before I would sit in a chair, stare at the blank page, and type words, and since I’d always been a dutiful student, what better way to write than to have a bona fide writing teacher with a published craft book anticipate reading my work for ten straight weeks?

Poor Choices, Good Material

I gravitated immediately to nonfiction because I’m not creative enough to write fiction, imaginary Miss Salter lied. Plus, before moving to Georgia, I’d ended a six-month marriage to a man I’d lived with for more than three years who struggled with drug addiction—the only person I’d ever cheated on, incidentally with the man whose desk I was currently using. After a stable, somewhat uneventful childhood, I had material because of poor adult relationship choices. Hallelujah!

Skydiving

My first short essay in that creative writing class describes jumping out of an airplane. It was a hot, dry August day near Lake Perris, California, two days after my wedding in 2005. The piece is called “The Fall” because it attempted to work on two levels: taking a literal leap from 13,000 feet and a metaphorical leap into an ill-advised, permanent commitment with someone I was unsure was a match, both of us bluffing the day we said, “I do.” It was a groovy idea but a poorly executed essay—both a missed opportunity and necessary practice.

In the first paragraph, I write skydiving occurred before we had sex on our honeymoon, a clue I’d made a tremendous mistake. Then I describe the plane:

“The small plane that carried us into the air was painted like a gray and blue shark, with jagged teeth marking the nose of the aircraft. The rickety jet looked as if it had been taped together with duct tape—twice. It rattled with the sound of loose bolts crashing against metal, and it flew like a bird with a clipped wing, dipping and swaying toward earth.”

Woefully Wordy

Was it a shark or a bird? Why “twice”? “It rattled” suffices. All planes carry people “into the air.” Someone get this poor girl an editor! Reading this wordy paragraph, I want to shake my younger shoulders and scream, “You’re trying too hard!” As my future book coach later said, “Pick the right image; render it correctly; move on.”

Cut the fluff.

The crux of this essay shouldn’t lie with what the plane looks like anyway. We only need to know it’s well-worn and possibly unsafe, so now I might write, “The small, rickety gray plane, with a nose painted with shark teeth, swayed as we gained elevation.”

I go on to describe the stickers slapped on the inside walls of the plane and call the jump experts taking us on this dangerous adventure “daredevil punks” and “crazy hooligans.” (Pick one and cut “crazy.”) I explain how they teased us, fondling the loose straps carrying our parachute packs. I describe my husband and his tandem companion sliding down the bench toward the door-less opening and the roar of the wind outside. I call the wind “deafening,” which it was, “blowing like an angry hurricane,” which it wasn’t. I write my husband turned into an “instant speck” when he jumped, a phrase I still like, but what I don’t do is describe the turbulence of my relationship. Why did I get married two days ago when I was still having doubts? Why did we not have sex on our wedding night—or the next day? Why is jumping out of a plane less scary than hurdling into this marriage? What is this essay about besides skydiving?

When a Scene Misses the Significance

I write, “I had lost him,” both during his free fall and in our relationship, but I fail to explain why. I talk around it: “Our three-and-a-half-year relationship, complete with a condo, a dog, and a variety of motorized toys in the garage, had led to this moment. Even though it was supposed to be the beginning, it felt like the end.”

Readers don’t read minds; they read the words writers write.

I then describe my tumble from the plane. There’s an “unfettered cry”; “spinning like a rag doll”; and that irksome Miss Salter: What if the chute doesn’t open? What will happen when I hit bottom? Why can’t I breathe? I didn’t actually have time to think anything when I was dropping from the sky at terminal velocity, but I’ll let those questions slide. But then, there’s this: “The screeching pressure pierced my ears like the needling voices that had been guiding my life for so long . . .” So many adjectives, so little explanation. I say something vague about being a people pleaser, but the reader still knows nothing concrete.

After my tandem instructor grabs my hand to pull the chute, we float “like a pendulum,” and I know I will survive, “gliding in for a perfect landing in the soft grass.” I describe this as one of my bravest moments, along with the moment I leave my husband six months later because I finally “listen to my heart,” a vague realization that leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

So Many Questions

I recently wrote in the margin, “How” would I survive the metaphorical fall? “Why” did I stuff my backpack full of clothes and head home to my parents’ house? “What happened?!”

I still like the idea of an essay about skydiving as a metaphor for my marriage. The piece could have worked if I’d been more adept and willing to dig deep into what happened between me and my husband when we wrote the vows we both broke immediately. Part of the problem was I didn’t fully understand our situation yet. I needed more time to work this story out, and my ex-husband didn’t get sober and make amends until 2011. Even then I didn’t accept all that had been hidden from me, nor did I fess up.

Also, when I wrote the piece, I didn’t feel free to write the whole truth. The man I almost married in Georgia once said, “You have storytelling disease.” I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. The desire to make meaning out of one’s personal history is not a disease. I knew if I wrote the real story, my current partner would be upset and wouldn’t understand why I’d felt compelled to do so. This stopped me.

What the Teacher Said

Here's what my UCI Extension instructor said about “The Fall”: “I’d like to know more, have a few more details about what was wrong. Had your husband pushed you into jumping out of the plane, which may have been the last straw?”

The smart reader shouldn’t have to guess what the writer is trying to say. The writer should be forthright, not obscure the facts with excessive, flowery language.

Skydiving was my idea. Getting married wasn’t. It took fourteen more years to write, revise, and publish the genuine story of these two overlapping partnerships, and I didn’t mention skydiving once.

A Sixteen-Year Journey to Complete a Book

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part I

In this blog series, I will explore my writing process from my first workshop to completed manuscript.

In 2007, seven years after completing seven years of college, I decided to take writing seriously. At thirty-four, I was a Southern California woman living in a small Georgia suburb north of Atlanta, in love with a man who’d soon give me a giant ring I would return before my thirty-fifth birthday to move home. When I believed I was in Georgia forever, feeling homesick, not writing, and longing for a creative community, I signed up for an online UCI Extension Creative Writing course. Connecting to my alma mater from afar, I didn’t know what I wanted to write. I only knew I wasn’t nurturing a gaping hole inside that writing fills. At the time, calling myself a “writer” felt like a lie, so I didn’t. I was a writer who didn’t write, and I was about to begin the arduous, wonderful process of finding my voice, determining my trajectory, and completing a memoir manuscript, at least half of which consists of life experience I hadn’t lived yet. Writing a book was a vague, lifelong dream that didn’t seem feasible for an edit-as-you-go perfectionist with no deadlines and a comfortable, unchallenging full-time editing job. It was easy—yet joyless—not to write.

Everything Saved

My first post-university creative writing class was one of many online and in-person workshops, lectures, and mentorships—and I have saved nearly every assignment, note of feedback, related email, discarded essay, published essay, handout, and unusable paragraph I kid myself into thinking I will still use someday. I have one hundred pages of an abandoned novel, several versions of my nonfiction book proposal, and an entire essay collection I scrapped to rewrite the still-living 66,000-word “completed” memoir manuscript I’m now submitting. No writing time has been wasted, nor will it ever be.

Perpetual Persistence

Fast approaching fifty, while I have yet to publish my first manuscript, I will not give up, and with a well-respected publisher recently saying my memoir is “compulsively readable,” I have another nudge to keep going, however long it takes, as frustrating and painful as the interminable wait is. I may have to write another book first. I may have to publish that one essay or op-ed that gets the right attention. I may have to go viral on the now-unraveling Twitter or Gen-Z-inundated-TikTok, a platform to which I fear I am too old and uncool to contribute. I may have to revise my proposal with updated comp titles for the umpteenth time—for the love of fuck—but if that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do.

After fifteen years, countless hours, nine workshops, seven lecture-based classes, five conferences, a magical book coach, an insightful “book doula,” a lifelong mentor, two consistent beta readers, thirteen public readings, a defunct seven-year blog, a current blog, more than twenty published essays, ninety-six agent queries, twenty-seven independent press submissions (three pending), monthslong excruciating breaks, and over two hundred literary rejections since I started sending out my work, I have a lot to say about how I wrote and revised a memoir. After watching one too many episodes of The Bachelorette, I hate the word “journey,” but that’s what it’s been, and that’s what I want to share, starting with that ten-week creative writing class in 2007.

Editing Advice for My Younger Self: A Blog Series

When I thought of the idea for this blog series and began locating and reading everything I’ve written since I was thirty-four, jotting notes about what I did right from the outset and where I went terribly wrong—my current self now the developmental and line editor for my younger self—I thought, “Oh crap, this is another book.” I also thought the examples and stories I plan to elucidate may be valuable. Plus, I see firsthand how far I’ve progressed. While I will always compare myself to better writers, of which there are many, I am a much better writer than I was in 2007—when I never met a torturous simile I didn’t find “clever,” hadn’t mastered the art of cutting superfluous words on any level, and had little grasp of the story under the story. (What is this really about?) It’s both cringey and reassuring to read my old work—some of which is downright insensitive, but I’ll get to that later.

Sixteen Years of Writing

I never received an MFA, a possibility I still research online at least every two years until I consider money, but I probably have roughly the equivalent experience. (I was once told in jest I have an “honorary” MFA.) Looking at my notes from that first workshop, I realize, if given the opportunity, I could teach a college-level writing workshop now. So, in this space, I plan to talk my way through the last fifteen (almost sixteen!) years on the page, with no idea how many posts it will turn into or how long it will take. Since I never want to stop learning, and I apparently haven’t fully abandoned the part of me that taught high school English for two years in my twenties, I hope this series turns into something useful—or at least will be somewhat amusing, even if I’m the only one reading it. In any case, next time I will reveal what I learned about writing when I was starving for creative kinship in Georgia when I had much less gray hair; my jeans were five sizes smaller; and I was planning a second wedding that never happened. Part two: coming soon.