As a writer, I’ve always been struck by the special demands of writing memoir. I agree wholeheartedly with Anne Lamott, who wrote, You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
Yet I choose to write behind the shield of fiction. Fiction can be—and should be—unflinching and honest, but it still shields a writer in a way that memoir does not. Memoir writers explore their lives, delving into what happened and why. More personal and less academic than autobiography, memoir needn’t be written by the famous or the infamous. As intimate as a love letter, memoir requires perspective and courage. The writer invites us to share her most private moments, the events and experiences that shaped her life.
This week’s Craft of Writing Q&A with Martha Grossman focuses on the work of a memoirist. Martha was born in Stamford, Texas. Educated at the University of Colorado with a degree in history, she taught school in Colorado for years, interrupting that career to serve two years in the Peace Corps in Colombia. She is an accomplished pianist, frequently appears in theatrical productions in her adopted home of Taos, New Mexico, and gets a particular kick out of watching her daughter, Naomi, in the role of Pepper in “American Horror Story.” Martha’s memoir, Coming of Age: Come Rain or Come Shine, will be published by Nighthawk Press in spring 2015.
Q: Describe your writing environment.
A: It must be dark, and comfortable. I write in bed, during the early morning hours, long before dawn. Words come to me as I emerge from sleep. I grab my pencil with a good eraser because I’m going to make lots of mistakes. I write the words down quickly, before they disappear like details from a dream.
Once in a writing workshop one of the participants spoke of her “four o’clock stories.” She would awaken every morning at that hour, move to her computer, and record what her voices were telling her. Although I am not that person, as I write this answer with pencil, I glance at my watch. It is 4:00 AM.
Q: What are your must-haves and must-not-haves in your writing space?
A: I must have comfort. I must feel warm and snuggly under a down comforter in my “cloud bed,” as it has been called. I must have silence. No interruptions. At that hour the phone is not likely to ring. I must have undisturbed quiet for as long as I need it, with no distractions or music. No voices other than the ones in my own head to shatter my focus.
Q: What compels you to write?
A: The feeling that I may have something to say. With my thoughts in the early morning darkness I know I’m getting somewhere when my breath becomes short, my palms get sweaty, and my body feels shivery. I realize I had better stay with it as long as necessary and record it while I can, because it is as fragile as a fairy’s wing and willquickly fly away.
Q: Describe your evolution as a writer.
A: I was not a “born writer.” In college I hated the assignment of a term paper. I would usually get by, gluing together other people’s thoughts. If the thoughts were good, I could get a reasonably good grade on the paper.
I did not begin to write by choice until middle age. I have kept a journal with daily entries since 1994. In my bookshelf stretches a yard-long length of 9.5” x 6” college-ruled notebooks. Sometimes I look at them but not often. When I am gone, they might be interesting reading for someone. Or not.
In the late 1990s I joined a writing group, No Coast Writers. From these people—and from life—I have learned anything I know about writing.
Q: Writing is an exchange. What do you want your readers to bring to your work, and what do you want to bring to them?
A: I want my readers to really listen, with their ears, minds, and hearts. I want to give them something that is worth listening to, something that may help them understand and sort things out from the confusion of life.
Q:What feeds your writing?
A: Life, whether it’s what befalls me personally or what I observe befalling others, or what happens to people I encounter in books. Usually it’s some difficulty, or at least a challenge. As Garrison Keillor tells us, no one writes about a sunny day.
Q: What’s the most valuable advice you ever received as a writer, and what advice would you offer novice writers?
A: From my “instructors” in my writing group I have heard directives like “Get more sensory detail into your work.” They advised me to go through a checklist of the five senses. What is the look, the sound, the taste, the feel, the smell of something? Although I often forget to employ this suggestion, it’s great advice and I would pass it along.
Another encouragement from the group has been to “Go deeper.” Don’t skate on the surface of an experience. What else is down there? What is really happening? It’s not easy to go deeper but it will pay off. I love the quote from a girl from Bimini in Loren Eiseley’s The Mind of Nature:“Those as hunts treasure must go alone at night, and when they find it they have to leave a little of their blood behind them.”
Q: What are you currently reading and what do you think of it?
A: I am reading Ivan Doig’s highly praised 1978 memoir, This House of Sky. I was first intrigued by the title. What better way to describe his growing up in Montana? I am also impressed with his descriptions: compact yet dense, and right on target. I am amazed at the way he makes verbs out of nouns and gets away with it.
Q: What makes something a good read for you?
A: My favorite books are those with lots of psychologically driven interior monologue. I like to know what people are thinking, why they are thinking it. It sounds voyeuristic and probably is.
Q:Do you have creative doubts or fears? What are they, and how do you overcome them? Specifically, since you write memoir, how do you handle other people’s doubts and fears?
A: I doubt that I will answer this question directly, if at all, because of my attitude toward fear. I believe fear to be the worst possible place from which to start writing. It has a paralyzing influence. I am lucky because eleven years ago my husband of forty-two years left me. From that time I have not felt fear about anything. I figured if that could happen to me and I could survive it, there was nothing else that I could ever be afraid of.
Q: We don’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration. What do you do when you’re not feeling the mojo?
A: I was given the following advice by a writer friend in a workshop: Begin each writing session by listing ten things for which you are grateful. Doing this puts one in a gentle, sensitive frame of mind. A grateful heart is an excellent place to begin writing. Or, inasmuch as I write upon awakening, I just take a nap.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am in the final stages of writing my memoir, Coming of Age: Come Rain or Come Shine. What I am now doing I call “scrubbing.” I am going back through the completed manuscript and removing the names of people who might be uncomfortable with the sensitive, intimate nature of the material. I am deliberately trying to camouflage their identities. This strikes me as very funny because I’ve tried to be specific and give detail. I’m reminded that detailed specificity could get me into trouble. I don’t want some of the people mentioned in the book to show up at my door, accompanied by a lawyer.
Q: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?
A: I would want to be a dancer. If I had time, I guess I would figure out how to make that happen.
Q: What didn’t I ask that I should have—and what’s the answer?
A: What is the most encouraging thing said to you about your writing as well as the most discouraging thing?
To end on a positive note I will first answer the second part of the question. The most discouraging thing said about my writing was uttered last week by my brother. I believe my two sisters feel similarly, although they didn’t say it exactly, mostly just implied it. My brother asked me why I felt compelled to publish my manuscript. He said, “Frankly, your purpose in doing this escapes me altogether.”
The most encouraging thing was said by a member of No Coast Writers. I had read aloud a passage from my book about a hummingbird who had flown into my house through an open door and couldn’t figure out how to get out. I had compared myself to the little bird, imprisoned in a marriage and wanting to be free. When I finished reading the piece there was a deep silence. Then I heard one of them breathe a little sigh and say, “Fucking gorgeous.”