still having memoir quandaries…

It’s one thing to share your story once and then when you find yourself sharing it over and over again, you feel a bit used up and squeezed out.

Nat Luurtsema – stand-up comedian and author

As they say, it’s easier to write a memoir after everyone you love is dead, or you are. You wouldn’t be writing it after you died, the logistics are too complicated, but you know what I am saying. Either way, it’s not really feasible. I do want to write about the crazy shit that’s happened to me, but I don’t want to offend anyone (or do I?) I certainly don’t want to get sued and give the assholes who made my life a misery at one stage yet another go at me. No siree. Wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

They also say “Write what you know.” I feel driven to write about being adopted because it’s what I know. I feel driven to write about being a young widow, because it’s what I know. I feel driven to write about embracing life regardless of what it throws at you, ditto reason above, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying I want to write to ‘help others’. That sounds really mean. I want to write about those things for my own selfish reasons but I also don’t want to write about those hard times for my own selfish reasons. Different reasons, but still very selfish. If reading about how I navigated losing Terry and the shitshow that followed is going to help someone then great but I don’t think I want to go back into the trenches and relive it all to do so.

There’s always creative non-fiction. Let’s see…There once lived a…troll…who lived in a ranch-house…oh wait…a cave, yeah it lived in a cave…and it hated the girl its surprisingly prince-like son marries… Maybe not…but you get the idea. Perhaps my WIP Remembering Paris could take a magical realism turn and I could be visiting Paris with myself at all my ages; the triumvirate. The maiden, the mother and the wise woman go to Paris and drink champagne… oh wait, have you read my book Hotel Déjà Vu?

Isn’t it amazing how the stories of our life leach out in a way that at the time we’re probably not aware of, even when we’re writing fiction? Stephen King wrote Carrie and Misery in the throes of drug and alcohol addiction that came through in those books in a way he says he couldn’t unsee once he got sober. Writing as therapy?

What does my new novel Mimi Gets Away with Murder tell you then…?