“What story are you trying to tell?”
I tried to answer that question for years. I thought I answered it a few times. I thought I had it down. Then it would shift again. What story do you want to tell in your memoir?
I wanted to tell my entire life story, of course.
I kept handing off my cacophony of words to my writing group, begging them to tell me what thread to pull, but they all said, “What story do YOU want to tell?” I began to feel somewhat murderous. Why wouldn’t anyone just TELL me which story was the most interesting? Childhood? Teaching? Homeless summer in Atlanta? Abuse? Survival?
Then the months of “Who the hell am I to think that any of my stories are worth telling anyway?” would arise and the Google doc sat dormant, the pages tucked away, the stories nestled in silence.
At one point, my manuscript numbered over 100,000 words — and I realized I had created a solid block of material in which the true story burrowed. I met Lidia Yuknavitch briefly that year, and said, “I think it’s time to blow it all up now.” She nodded, “Yea, that sounds true to the process.” But I couldn’t quite do it, so my manuscript sat. I even bought a special box to house my opus; that’s how dear my words became.
About six months later, and in the middle of the first Covid summer, I found a venue for publication, but as the deadline approached for my first draft, it was still this boxed-up, pristine, ribboned monstrosity, so my editor said, “We could give you more time and go with our second option.”
Ego rose like a fire inside of me; it conquered Covid-malaise; it conquered depression-malaise; it conquered writers-block-malaise. I said, “Give me a week.”
I looked at my rough, rough draft and declared, “Only the most vibrant shall live!” and I became a slasher, a clawer, a chiseler, a rescuer. The Maiden, The Whore, and The Crone began crawling out like women from behind The Yellow Wallpaper and formed the three sections of my memoir. Any line too precious, too dear went, any paragraph or section that lingered just-in-case went down.
The fluff in my manuscript consisted of places where I thought I needed to defend my actions — but that’s exactly what I didn’t need to do. That is not the art, nor the purpose, of the memoir. Its beauty lies in truth, not in self-defense.
Slice by slice, I uncovered Wild Woman: Memoir in Pieces, a novella-sized work. My best advice? Discard any notions of what form a memoir should be. We make meaning by matrixing, linking symbols, pieces of our lives, into a pattern. Our minds take in fragments that we piece together, attach to tidy schemas, but when they don’t attach, trauma arises — and writing helps those bits latch onto something else, something grand.
I let go of my notion that I needed a clear beginning, middle, and end for each piece, that a memoir justifies a life, that others’ reactions dictated my story. I presented vibrant bits and pieces of a narrative that, at the end, hopefully, portray my life as mosaic. I also weaved a leitmotif of depression and suicide. Others suggested I might avoid this because it’s “overdone” in memoir, but some of the most powerful comments I received post-publication have come
from others who suffer from depression and who felt understood within my pages.
My muse works in a mysterious manner: first, I must put my ass in the chair, let the pen meet the page, and open myself to whatever comes–even if I write badly (and I WILL write badly quite often.) This process may (will) take years. I must allow words to come whether they blame, justify, or reframe. In doing this, I will create an entire block of material that I will love, cherish, despise, protect, ignore, and honor. Then, when I put it on a pedestal, or in a fancy box, I need
someone to poke my ego until I carve away the protective layers and unleash the narrative core.
I’m still at work on my full-length memoir, but I published the book I needed in order to move on to the next, and my ass is back in the chair, and I am writing, and I am letting it all come, all of the chaotic, glorious mess of it.
About the Author
Cindy Cunningham has served as Literary Arts and English Chair for the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for the Arts and Technology since 2002. She’s an instructor at Life in 10 Minutes and serves as Co-editor with Valley Haggard for Unzipped, a Life in 10 Press quarterly publication that publishes stories that are urgent, brave, and true. She also sits on the Board of Richmond Young Writers. She is the author of Wild Woman: Memoir in Pieces and Bittersweet Swallows, a poetry chapbook.