“Why do you want to write this memoir?” my memoir coach Shari Caudron asked.
A simple enough question that didn’t prepare me for the confusion and torrent of emotions that followed.
Three years ago I set out to write a memoir. It was to be a sweeping saga of intergenerational trauma passed through three generations of a Catholic family in India. It would read like the Indian version of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, minus the humor and the writing caliber. After pouring my heart out in a few chapters it was clear that it would take ten years to write a memoir of that scope, not to mention the thousands of dollars in therapy to survive the memories I was unlocking.
It was a good thing I disembarked from that flight of fantasy. And yet, here I was a few years later with Shari, unable to let go of the idea that I HAD to write THAT story. Some version of it. Any version of it. Not writing it was haunting me.
In the gentle coaxing manner that makes her the fantastic coach she is, Shari was able to get to the heart of why. I was surprised to learn that my desperation for wanting to write the story had little to do with some grand writerly ambition I had assumed it was. It was so much simpler than that - I wanted to write the memoir to complete the endless incomplete, intrusive thoughts constantly swirling in my head. I had to understand what led to my mother’s and brother’s deaths decades ago, and the chaos that followed those events.
Since wrapping the coaching session with Shari, I’ve been asking myself the next logical question - who am I writing this for?
Kurt Vonnegut answered that question in Palm Sunday:
“I said in Slapstick that she was the person I wrote for - that every creative person creates with an audience of one in mind. That’s the secret of artistic unity. Anybody can achieve it, if he or she will make something with only one person in mind. I didn’t realize that she was the person I wrote for until after she died.”
Kurt Vonnegut wrote for his sister Alice Vonnegut Adams. That was it. His incredibly talented sister was his audience of one.
I’m writing for my brother. Arriving at this conclusion has simplified my mission and made it profoundly motivating.
Who are you writing for?
Another great threshold -- congrats, Genevieve! I remember that Kurt Vonnegut quote. Thanks for reminding me. I think I'll post about it too!