How I Wrote a Memoir: Part II
A Critique of My First Workshop Essay
Welcome to How I Wrote a Memoir. If you haven’t read Part I, it’s here. Here’s Part II:
Imagine a thirty-four-year-old transplant sitting at her soon-to-be fiancé’s oak desk in a suburban home north of Atlanta, Georgia, across the street from the cul-de-sac moms who lounge in lawn chairs in the driveway chatting, while their husbands work and their toddlers tumble in the grass. In 2007, I imagine I was invisible to the neighborhood Southern ladies because I was a childless, unmarried Californian with a job. It didn’t take much to determine we had nothing in common. I waved to them, but I was never invited into their unspoken club. I was starving for authentic companionship, so I signed up for an online creative writing class through UC Irvine Extension, where I had previously spent three glorious years on campus. I needed to find my people again.
A Writer Who Doesn't Write
I didn’t have a plan for my writing. I only knew it was well past time to explore it. When I was twenty-two, I wrote in my journal, “I just want to be a writer.” Twelve years later I still wasn’t writing, a result of an incapacitating fear of failure. My cruel inner voice berated me with no supporting evidence to back up its claims: You will never be good enough. What will people think of you? Why even try?
Name That Pesky Inner Editor
Many years later, during a Hugo House class in Seattle on Mindful Writing, Anna Vodicka asked us to name our negative inner voices and tell them, “I’m not listening to you.” I named mine after my nightmare sixth-grade teacher who launched heavy objects across the room when she was angry and cussed at our parents under her breath loud enough for us to hear. During Anna’s class, I thought, “I’m not listening to you, Miss Salter.”
Back in 2007, I needed an outside party to provide deadlines before I would sit in a chair, stare at the blank page, and type words, and since I’d always been a dutiful student, what better way to write than to have a bona fide writing teacher with a published craft book anticipate reading my work for ten straight weeks?
Poor Choices, Good Material
I gravitated immediately to nonfiction because I’m not creative enough to write fiction, imaginary Miss Salter lied. Plus, before moving to Georgia, I’d ended a six-month marriage to a man I’d lived with for more than three years who struggled with drug addiction—the only person I’d ever cheated on, incidentally with the man whose desk I was currently using. After a stable, somewhat uneventful childhood, I had material because of poor adult relationship choices. Hallelujah!
Skydiving
My first short essay in that creative writing class describes jumping out of an airplane. It was a hot, dry August day near Lake Perris, California, two days after my wedding in 2005. The piece is called “The Fall” because it attempted to work on two levels: taking a literal leap from 13,000 feet and a metaphorical leap into an ill-advised, permanent commitment with someone I was unsure was a match, both of us bluffing the day we said, “I do.” It was a groovy idea but a poorly executed essay—both a missed opportunity and necessary practice.
In the first paragraph, I write skydiving occurred before we had sex on our honeymoon, a clue I’d made a tremendous mistake. Then I describe the plane:
“The small plane that carried us into the air was painted like a gray and blue shark, with jagged teeth marking the nose of the aircraft. The rickety jet looked as if it had been taped together with duct tape—twice. It rattled with the sound of loose bolts crashing against metal, and it flew like a bird with a clipped wing, dipping and swaying toward earth.”
Woefully Wordy
Was it a shark or a bird? Why “twice”? “It rattled” suffices. All planes carry people “into the air.” Someone get this poor girl an editor! Reading this wordy paragraph, I want to shake my younger shoulders and scream, “You’re trying too hard!” As my future book coach later said, “Pick the right image; render it correctly; move on.”
Cut the fluff.
The crux of this essay shouldn’t lie with what the plane looks like anyway. We only need to know it’s well-worn and possibly unsafe, so now I might write, “The small, rickety gray plane, with a nose painted with shark teeth, swayed as we gained elevation.”
I go on to describe the stickers slapped on the inside walls of the plane and call the jump experts taking us on this dangerous adventure “daredevil punks” and “crazy hooligans.” (Pick one and cut “crazy.”) I explain how they teased us, fondling the loose straps carrying our parachute packs. I describe my husband and his tandem companion sliding down the bench toward the door-less opening and the roar of the wind outside. I call the wind “deafening,” which it was, “blowing like an angry hurricane,” which it wasn’t. I write my husband turned into an “instant speck” when he jumped, a phrase I still like, but what I don’t do is describe the turbulence of my relationship. Why did I get married two days ago when I was still having doubts? Why did we not have sex on our wedding night—or the next day? Why is jumping out of a plane less scary than hurdling into this marriage? What is this essay about besides skydiving?
When a Scene Misses the Significance
I write, “I had lost him,” both during his free fall and in our relationship, but I fail to explain why. I talk around it: “Our three-and-a-half-year relationship, complete with a condo, a dog, and a variety of motorized toys in the garage, had led to this moment. Even though it was supposed to be the beginning, it felt like the end.”
Readers don’t read minds; they read the words writers write.
I then describe my tumble from the plane. There’s an “unfettered cry”; “spinning like a rag doll”; and that irksome Miss Salter: What if the chute doesn’t open? What will happen when I hit bottom? Why can’t I breathe? I didn’t actually have time to think anything when I was dropping from the sky at terminal velocity, but I’ll let those questions slide. But then, there’s this: “The screeching pressure pierced my ears like the needling voices that had been guiding my life for so long . . .” So many adjectives, so little explanation. I say something vague about being a people pleaser, but the reader still knows nothing concrete.
After my tandem instructor grabs my hand to pull the chute, we float “like a pendulum,” and I know I will survive, “gliding in for a perfect landing in the soft grass.” I describe this as one of my bravest moments, along with the moment I leave my husband six months later because I finally “listen to my heart,” a vague realization that leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
So Many Questions
I recently wrote in the margin, “How” would I survive the metaphorical fall? “Why” did I stuff my backpack full of clothes and head home to my parents’ house? “What happened?!”
I still like the idea of an essay about skydiving as a metaphor for my marriage. The piece could have worked if I’d been more adept and willing to dig deep into what happened between me and my husband when we wrote the vows we both broke immediately. Part of the problem was I didn’t fully understand our situation yet. I needed more time to work this story out, and my ex-husband didn’t get sober and make amends until 2011. Even then I didn’t accept all that had been hidden from me, nor did I fess up.
Also, when I wrote the piece, I didn’t feel free to write the whole truth. The man I almost married in Georgia once said, “You have storytelling disease.” I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. The desire to make meaning out of one’s personal history is not a disease. I knew if I wrote the real story, my current partner would be upset and wouldn’t understand why I’d felt compelled to do so. This stopped me.
What the Teacher Said
Here's what my UCI Extension instructor said about “The Fall”: “I’d like to know more, have a few more details about what was wrong. Had your husband pushed you into jumping out of the plane, which may have been the last straw?”
The smart reader shouldn’t have to guess what the writer is trying to say. The writer should be forthright, not obscure the facts with excessive, flowery language.
Skydiving was my idea. Getting married wasn’t. It took fourteen more years to write, revise, and publish the genuine story of these two overlapping partnerships, and I didn’t mention skydiving once.
