Writing a memoir is not a cake walk for anyone, I suspect. But my fifteen-year journey from desire to fruition (but not yet publication) dragged me out of my comfort zone and changed me in ways I discover daily.

            For more than three decades, I taught university undergraduates and graduates alike the nuances of well-constructed sentences, shapely paragraphs, comely essays. I shared the notions of precise and telling details, rhythm and word play, patterns and their violation. The research essential to fiction. We discussed Checkov’s gun as foreshadowing or, perhaps, intentional misdirection. I provided examples from the greats and off-the-cuff attempts of my own to encourage them to dive in and play with words. To challenge their sacreds. To kill their beloveds (as I called those “perfect” but meaningless sentences they could not bear to excise). I wanted them to stop seeing writing as a Sisyphian hurdle to be overcome, syntax as a beast to be beaten into submission. I wanted to make writing fun.

            I felt the fraud. I’d always felt the impostor in the halls of academe, but now I was preaching outside my training or experience. My own creative writing remained little more than a thought or the rare and errant dabble on social media or my moribund blog. I began projects and dropped them, comfortable to return to the familiar dictates of scholarly research writing with its not-to-be-crossed lines and pedantic voice, the relative anonymity of the self-proclaimed expert. My several scholarly books and scores of peer-reviewed articles cemented me as a scholarly author, but I was terrified of the personal presence needed in creative writing.

            Despite my persistent rejection and denial, the inner clamor for a memoir refused to be stilled. It demanded I write the story of my childhood. Its refusal to shut up drove me to dash off scenes and stories from my most pressing memories, flashes of setting, snippets of dialogue. Eventually, these grew into some six hundred pages of blurbs and vignettes with no organizing vision and certainly no narrative arc. They were the beginning. I do not recommend you follow this process unless you must.

            I’m not sure I could have completed a memoir without multiple drafts of what some might call verbal diarrhea. Across a decade, I abandoned some half dozen completed drafts wholesale in a grueling process that allowed me to slowly internalize and move beyond the lessons buried in my noisiest memories. The recollections that screamed the loudest, at least for me, did not have much of worth to share. They held me back. But once disinterred, and with abundant counsel from therapists and dear friends and fellow writers, they shattered and to expose a different, richer version of my past.

            For me, the deeply revelatory nature of memoir required letting go and forgiving and embracing all of my past to find the joy I had buried beneath the ever-so-telegenic horrors of my family life. To write a memoir rather than a tale of woe and revenge, I needed to grow up, gain self-esteem, and see myself clearly. The essay I share here gives you a glimpse of my outcome. It’s taken from my unpublished memoir, SHARDS: A LIFE REASSEMBLED.

            One of the biggest lessons writing the memoir taught me is as much a lesson of life as of writing. Life and writing are a process of growth and change. There is not one perfect story, not one right way to shape your narrative, not one correct way to live. Today’s perfect match may seem flat, uninspired tomorrow. The change of perspective reflects a change in you, which is the precursor to a new story, a new day. So go ahead and write today’s story, the one poking you now, here, this minute. The one begging you to listen. Do with it what you will. Tomorrow, you’ll find yourself changed and prepared for your new, your next, your ever-shifting story. Jump aboard. Enjoy the ride.