As part of a master’s degree in creative writing, I wrote a memoir called A Yankee Down Under which details the six years my family spent in Australia. I’d done an efficient job describing where we’d been, cultural differences I’d observed and a little about family life. Then I read the first two chapters to my writing group. They called baloney. They wanted more personal details. How did you feel? How much did it cost? Did you fight with your husband? These were the questions they asked and they were right to do so.
So, I returned to my computer, discouraged, but not defeated. I tried to channel how I felt when we decided to move from Darien, Connecticut to Australia. Part of the attraction for me, was to escape the affluent town we were living in. I was out of step with the lifestyle, but didn’t have the courage not to conform. Australia was my escape hatch.
Earlier in the year, I took a memoir writing class with Lou Ann Walker at the John Jermain Library in Sag Harbor. While there, I wrote a piece about leaving work to become a stay at home Mom. This piece was more honest than anything I’d written in my entire manuscript. It occurred to me that much of what I’d written in this piece would work in my first chapter and plugged it in. In the end, I my writer’s group’s interest should have flattered not discouraged me. They wanted to get to know me. Let’s hope I can find the right balance between personal and fact as I feel my way forward.
Interestingly, it seems Richard Gilbert had a similar realization which he describes in his blog post written on October 21st. NARRATIVE
