When your closest loved ones are main characters

As an aspiring memoirist, this is a conundrum!

How does one write about closest family and friends without causing offence? Is that even possible?

The thing about memoir is that you are writing from YOUR perspective, about your memories of specific events as best you remember them. By definition, your memory of events could be very different from other people who experienced the exact same thing, albeit their way.

Furthermore, memoir often involves uncovering difficult memories and writing about them. The characters by definition may have done bad things, shameful things, unforgivable things. Or you maybe writing about sad, difficult events that others may have put behind them and may not want to dredge up or want written about for public consumption.

The fact that you have chosen to write about this event maybe hard for others to  accept or understand and may indeed cause a rift between you and them.

So how do we deal with this IF we decide to go ahead and still write what we feel compelled to write?

Do we change their names in an attempt to preserve their privacy?
Do we “edit” what we share, presenting the good and dialing back the bad?
Do we pretend we are writing fiction?

As I wrote my memoir I reflected a lot about this.

Kingsley Amis, author of Lucky Jim, once said “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

I also love Anne Lamott’s uncompromising comment on this question. ‘If people wanted me to write more warmly about them, they should have behaved better.’

And finally, the quote of all quotes, the quote that really propelled me on my journey was by Frank Kafka – Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Yes Sir!

I think what I’ve learned on this journey of learning about writing memoir and reading memoir, is that you have to be honest in what you write. Memories are flawed, we know that. The aim is not to try and aim for a perfect retelling of a story but rather, the truest form of your memory as possible. And that means telling it like it is including presenting your characters fully not editing characters ( family members and friends) to make them more or less sympathetic to avoid causing offense, or maybe even to “get back at them” in some sort of vendetta.

I also think that writing a tell-all memoir and spinning it as a work of fiction is cowardly. 

Don’t write the story if you can’t write the truth of the situation.

Memoir is about truth and the truth may be ugly and unsettling, but truth as close to what we remember is important.