Tag: about memoir

My “Career”: A Report From the Wilderness

Back in September of 2015, I was accepted into Lesley University’s low-res MFA program. I had applied in two genres: fiction and nonfiction.

I was more interested in fiction at the time, but I sent along the second application, figuring that if I couldn’t get into my first choice, I had another opportunity to advance myself via this other stream of writing that I had begun pursuing.

I got the call notifying me of my acceptance a full week before the deadline for applications, but was told that I’d been accepted into the nonfiction genre, not the fiction genre that I had hoped for. Still, I was pleased to have been accepted into the program. On reflection, I felt that the selectors had been correct, as the nonfiction writing sample I had given them was the stronger of the two I’d sent, and I had applied in nonfiction, so it was entirely legitimate for the school to offer me a slot in that program.

In fact, I was the only nonfiction student in my semester, though beginning in my second semester, another student who had taken a semester off joined me, and kept pace with me until the end.

Still, I was left with some reservations that I had to work through in order to find my way to enthusiastically embracing the idea of being a nonfiction writer. Was it really what I wanted to do? Could I embrace it as a course of study leading me to my beloved genre fiction while bypassing some of the conventions of mainstream fiction? If I were to be a nonfiction writer, what exactly would I write about? I’d been accepted into the program on the strength of a memoir piece: was memoir all I had to offer as a nonfiction writer?

Without a clear answer to these questions, I dove in and began producing new work, absorbing what I could from the seminars, workshops, and one-on-one mentor/mentee work that would be the bulk of the means of imparting my training as a writer. In the end, what I hoped for happened: I left the program a much more confident writer, with a deeper understanding of my craft.

At the other end of that process, I find that I am unclear on my direction forward. I have harbored the notion that my training in nonfiction would stand me in good stead as a fantasy fiction author, and there are stories I mean to write that are of that sort.

But I also have a few essays that I’ve written, a couple I’ve placed in tiny markets here, another there, a couple that I would like to find a home for somewhere, but haven’t yet. I am also about halfway through a book of memoir essays. I think I have some good stuff, but I need that much more to get to something that actually *would* be a full-length memoir.

My few brief encounters with agents through the auspices of my MFA program leave me with doubts as to the salability of that work, though the consensus is that the quality of my work is good. What’s lacking, then, is a sense of mission. My idea of what I want my career as a writer to look like — what I want my work to mean — is less than completely formed.

I don’t know that I should know what my body of work will ultimately look like at this point. But I should have goals, and some sense of how to proceed towards them. I am working in a vacuum. I have described myself as being in that post-MFA wilderness. I haven’t found my way to connect what I do to an audience. I am walking through this desert somewhat aimlessly.

But I am walking, and I am looking for trails and signs that will lead me towards civilization — towards what I want from my writing, which is to be a part of the cultural conversation. My ideas, my metaphors, my stories: I want them to matter in the world.

Flaws and Forgiveness

What can we be forgiven for? What, specifically, is that line that, if it were to be crossed, there could be no redemption, ever? Kevin Spacey comes to mind in this regard. Evidently, he victimized under-aged boys, and did so for decades. People in the industry knew this about Spacey. Considered, until recently, one of the greatest actors of our time by many, a few knew him to be a monster: a predator. Can he ever find forgiveness? Can those who knew but never spoke be forgiven?

And what of Thomas Jefferson? What of many of the founding fathers, who owned slaves and/or stole the land of the indigenous people of this land often over their dead bodies. Look around, Americans. You live in the society Jefferson and his colleagues devised. Can our own founding fathers be forgiven? Since he’s been dead for 192 years now, Is Jefferson beyond the need for forgiveness? I wonder who that mercy might benefit, if given. Perhaps no one?

And what about me? What about you? What infractions against the general welfare might cause any of us be in need of forgiveness? Do we need forgiveness before we are found out? Or are we only sorry if we are caught? Should any of us be forgiven? What good is forgiveness? What payment to society in recompense for our transgressions is too extreme? At what point does the administration of supposed justice cross the line and become a crime in and of itself? Is revenge ever a good thing? Can it return us to balance, as it claims to intend?

Can we ever forgive ourselves? For whatever crimes, known or unknown, that we have on our spiritual ledgers, can we offer grace to our own troubled minds? Can we show ourselves mercy?

And having absolved ourselves, what shall we do then? Do we simply go on with our lives? Do we remember the cost of our transgressions? Do we deserve our own forgiveness? Will we disappoint even ourselves?

I have disappointed myself many times. Do I deserve forgiveness? I have trouble forgiving myself. In small dark nook in my heart, I have not yet done so. I see how not forgiving myself holds me back. But forgiving myself is very hard to do.

I want to believe them. They’re probably right. But it’s hard.

Can I forgive my betrayers? Can I forgive those who have deliberately wounded my dignity? Can I forgive those who have broken my heart? I want to. I am a romantic, a utopian. I want everyone to understand each other and be friends. But too often, I have been misunderstood. I must not be very good at explaining myself, or perhaps I am strange.

Because I can forgive almost anyone else, but I can never seem to forgive myself.

My Ten Favorite Book-Length Memoirs

I’ve only been reading memoirs with any sense of purpose for the last couple of years. I applied to the Lesley MFA program hoping to get into the fiction genre, but I also applied to their nonfiction genre track, “as a backup,” I thought at the time. It turns out that I am much better at nonfiction, which was pointed out to me at the time of my acceptance into that genre at Lesley. Looking over the two writing samples I sent in after the fact, I have to agree.

That doesn’t come out of nowhere. I learned much about writing from reading top-tier rock journalism, with the staff of the long-defunct Creem Magazine being my most essential teachers-by-example. Through a longstanding fascination with Native American history, I have also come to love the writing of Peter Matheisson, Mari Sandoz, and Dee Brown.

As a student of nonfiction, I have been given a number of great books to read by people who know the genre much better than I do. The majority of the titles on this list came from my teachers: one is by a teacher of mine. There are a few things here that I’ve found on my own. Every one of these books has taught me something about the craft of writing.

This list is not in any particular order.

  • All the Strange Hours by Loren Eisely
    A surprisingly lyrical, if dark, recounting of his life by the pre-eminent popular science writer of the 1960s.
  • Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
    Perceptive and harrowing, this coming of age story by a woman who lost half of her lower jaw to cancer while in her early teens offers no easy answers or pat endings.
  • Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
    Elegantly written recounting of a woman’s complex relationship with her mother. It’s a model for anyone’s work in the area of memoir.
  • Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures by Kyoko Mori
    Blunt and controversial story about the author’s conflicted relationship with her home country, her father, and her stepmother, and also tells of her self-discovery and new life in America.
  • She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
    Important to me on many levels, I read it as I was beginning the process of my own transition. I recognized many things about myself in its pages. It gave me courage.
  • Violence Girl by Alice Bag
    This book thrives for me through Alice’s eye and fierce honesty, on its lens into the earliest days of the LA punk scene, and her upbringing in an East LA barrio. Uncompromising and powerful.
  • The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
    Memoir as queer theory tract. Iconoclastic and deeply felt excavation of a relationship, a life, and our culture.
  • Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
    One of the greatest voices of the twentieth century brings you into the trenches with him when he fought for the Anarchists (and against the Fascists) in the Spanish Civil War. Gorgeous and heartbreaking.
  • Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR’s Polio Haven by Susan Richards Shreve
    Written with vulnerability and honesty, this book captures the discomfort and self-destructive awkwardness of adolescence.
  • The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood by Helene Cooper
    Account of a privileged childhood lived in a land about to be plunged into a disastrous civil war that would change everything the author knew of the world.