When fiction writer Janice Eidus (see the From Our Correspondents article of 12/12/02) introduced me to the work of nonfiction writer Sue William Silverman, I knew I wanted to find out what she had to say on memoir writing.  After I read both of her memoirs, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You and Love Sick, One Woman’s Journey Through Sexual Addiction, I was not only in deep admiration of her writing and voice, but I also knew she had wrestled deeply not only with her past but with many issues the best memoir writers face.

When you read the following excerpts from her books, you will discover why I knew what Sue William Silverman told us about memoir writing would prove very valuable, especially for those writing memoirs on subjects we think everyone would rather forget about.

When we write from personal experience, we all sometimes ask ourselves, “Who am I to bring this up?” Or we think, “Everyone will hate me if I tell the truth,” and then become worried about other people’s reactions.  Sometimes we doubt that we are actually remembering correctly and start to second guess ourselves. Other times, we fear that we don’t remember enough to write.  Although we could certainly visit places and speak to people and do some research that would jog our memories, we hesitate.  The memoir or personal essays we could write to put together a cohesive, authentic view of our experiences and the way we grew because of them go unwritten, and we remain sorely in need of telling the truth so we can grow.

Let’s read some of Sue William Silverman ‘s work for inspiration and for the nudge we need to stop keeping ourselves from writing what is most important for us to say.

 From Love Sick, WW Norton and Company, 2001:

This memoir is arranged by the 28 days of the author’s in-patient treatment at a rehab facility.  As the chapter entitled “Day Five” begins, we already know that one of the aides at the hospital is seducing the women under treatment for sexual addiction.  He has approached the author, “I want to meet you,” he says. “Before supper tomorrow.  Outside.”  He continues, “I’ll bring a blanket.  A bottle of wine.  You’ll have almost an hour before anyone’ll notice you missing.”

At the opening of “Day Five,” the author waits for Gabriel and thinks about the married lover she had been meeting once weekly:

I stand under a raintree by the curb of the hospital. I watch for the silver glint of Gabriel’s pickup in the lowering sun. The air smells vacant with dusk. I can fill it with anything.  I can fill it with you, Gabriel–touching the skin on my shoulder. Since I didn’t bring my addict-clothes to the hospital, just before leaving my room I split the seam of my STRANDED ON THE STRAND T-shirt to expose my shoulder.

I sit on the curb. My untied laces look like pieces of rash. I haven’t been outside at this hour since coming to the hospital. Nights are cooler. I imagine that next time I meet Rick at the Rainbow Motel we won’t need air-conditioning. The swimming pool will be empty. The smell of chlorine will drain from the air. For twenty-four hours after I leave there, I always smell it in my hair. Now, I think, next time I meet Rick I’ll smell particles of burning dust from the heater. Yes, I still have Rick and the Rainbow Motel…if Gabriel doesn’t show up.

The traffic hum is distant, as if no silver truck will ever near me.  The rising moon tangles in the top branches of raintrees and pines, unable to shake loose and continue on a smooth journey. In the morning, I know, the sun will be too gummy and sullen to shine.

Sue William Silverman’s images and details allow us to experience this moment fully.  Who among us hasn’t caught her or himself making a poor decision, of failing to choose what is best, of opting for the destructive familiar?  However, how many of us have shown the confidence and courage to put this on the page? When writing about experiences that were difficult for me, I like to remember, how much I have grown from others who have done so and shown me the way.  I like to remember that I never sat there while I was reading and thought, “Who are they to write this?”  Instead, I was drawn into their well-written experience and found myself growing along with them as I relived whatever portions of my own experience resonated with theirs.

From Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, The University of Georgia Press, 1996:

As a very young teen, the author attends a dance for sailors in a St.Thomas port near the house she grew up in. As she is dancing with a sailor, she tears herself away from him to meet her father who has come to pick her up.  Once she is inside her father’s car, her father touches her underpants and stops the car on a dark street, pulling them off and unzipping his slacks.  He wants to know that his daughter, who he has been sexually abusing for years, belongs to him. “That part of me he wants me to love is hard against me,” the author writes:

“Yes, Daddy, I hated it [the dance].” He kisses me and touches my body. “You want to be with me.” “Yes, Daddy,” I whisper. And then he is pinning me deeper. The top of my head bangs the door handle as he does what he does when he has to be inside of me.  I concentrate on that, on the top of my head hitting metal as he loves me loves me loves me almost more than either of can manage.

The next day the author’s mother (who has clearly been ignoring what she knows about her husband’s behavior) finds a silk handkerchief, given to her daughter by the sailor she danced with. The author’s mother asks if her daughter had danced with him much, if the sailor had tried to kiss her.

“No, Mom, of course not,” I say, laughing.  Did he hold you? He must have kissed you. “No, Mom, no, no, no.” I begin to scream–but now, it’s a laugh. I laugh harder.  “Nothing happened.” She insists that something did, I must have done something or he wouldn’t have given me such a present. But all I can do is pound my fists on the bed and laugh.

***

At least once a week, when my mother is not watching, I steal a penny out of her wallet.  Back in my room I retrieve my Chinese puzzle box that I keep hidden under my doll clothes. The box has a secret chamber that releases the lock.  I spring it open. And each week I add another penny to my collection.

The language and rhythms, dialogue and situations that Sue William Silverman juxtaposes in her book make for a reading experience as immediate as viewing a movie.  Cuts in the narrative help her transverse diverse settings and days.  Most importantly, you realize that the unsayable can be said and the psychological story told with images and details.  There is no exposition in this writing, but scene after scene as reported by the person who was harmed and coped with her father’s terrifying deviancy and her mother’s lack of protection.  Whatever I find myself reluctant to say in my own writing, I now have a model for trusting that images and details can provide order and meaning.

Now that you have experienced a bit of Sue William Silverman’s writing, here are the questions that I posed to her and her fortifying answers:

Question #1: You have written two memoirs on especially difficult topics. Despite the upsetting nature of the topics, the writing is beautiful and moving, spellbinding. I know that you have tried your hand at fiction, and I believe that all writers get pleasure from writing, even if it is about pain, so I was wondering what you enjoy about writing memoir that writing fiction doesn’t allow you to do.

I began as a fiction writer and wrote several bad novels, all now collecting dust in my closet. Mainly, I could never figure out plot! To me, it always seemed like an artificial construct that one must impose upon the material.

As soon as I switched to nonfiction, I immediately felt at ease with the genre.  In fact, much to my amazement, my first memoir seemed to fall out of me and took only three months to complete.  (I have to admit, though, that Love Sick took five years to write.)  Yes, sure, memoirs have plots, but they’re not artificially imposed. While there is external action that moves the story forward, still, in memoir, plot is (or can be) more internal. It’s more about a search for emotional growth.

I’m also drawn to memoir because it helps me to better understand, mainly through metaphor, the connections between events in my life.  Metaphor gives these events a shape, an organization.  By “collecting” all my words on pieces of paper, my life becomes a tangible entity that I can hold in my hands, look at, and think: Yes, this is my life. I see it now.

Question #2: We are often told by teachers to write the way we speak.  I can’t imagine how you could write about your topics as if you were merely speaking about them. They were secret so long.  Do you think your nonfiction literary voice is different from your everyday voice?  If so, in what ways?

My literary voice isn’t my “real” speaking voice.  As I mentioned above, my writing voice focuses on metaphor–not something of which I’m at all conscious in everyday life.  In addition, my two memoirs are each written in vastly different (and several) voices.

For example, in Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You I utilize two main voices.

The voice of me as a child is only aware enough to relate the facts of my childhood.  I am saying, in effect: “My father did this (sexual) thing to me. And then he did this.”  While I provide specific details, I am unable to comment upon them, for this voice is too scared, young, confused.

This “young voice” is then twined with a strong-woman-author voice who does have the capability to reflect back on this story, this past, interpret the facts, and guide the reader through the maze of an incestuous family.

In my second memoir, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey Through Sexual Addiction, I also employ two voices: a sober voice and an addict voice.  For example, in one section I utilize both these voices when describing my feelings toward a scarf given to me by my married lover.  “I press the scarf against my nose and mouth. I take a deep breath.  The scent is of him–leaves smoldering in autumn dusk–and I believe it is a scent I have always craved, one I will always want.  I don’t understand why the scent of the scarf…seems more knowable, more tangible than the rest of him.” (Page 87).  Here, I begin in my addict voice where I romanticize the man and the maroon-scarf scent before moving into a more sober voice that realizes that the scarf embodies alienation, loneliness, loss.  This sober voice, therefore, guides the reader through the quagmire of the addiction.

In general, I think of the mature author voice as a guide carrying a lantern through a dark forest (sex addiction, incest–whatever your subject) and lighting the way for the reader, so the reader can see, understand, make sense of the events, actions, behaviors.  These various voices interact throughout a memoir to create “development.” (Plot!) What develops? The insights you want your experience to convey.

Question #3: In an article entitled “Confessional & (Finally) Proud of It,” you mention that once your parents died, you felt freer to tell your story.  But how do you deal with the difficulties your personal story raises for other living relatives?

I hope friends and relatives understand my need, as a writer, to tell my stories–but I also know that I can’t control how anyone might feel about my work.  I must write what I need to write when I need to write it. Having said this, though, I’ve been lucky. For example, even though my sister doesn’t feel comfortable reading my books, she does support me.

In terms of my extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.), I’ve also been lucky.  Growing up, I barely knew them, so felt no compunction to notify anyone when my first book was published.  It wasn’t until “Because I Remember Terror…” came out in paperback that I finally began to hear from some of my relatives. Amazing as it seems, they were quite supportive, read my book, and told me how sorry they were that they hadn’t known at the time, when I was a child, what was happening. (And these are relatives on my father’s side of the family!)  I have heard there are family members who aren’t pleased; but they haven’t told me to my face. So, all in all, I am pleasantly shocked because I know that other writers get a lot of grief and denial from their relatives.

My most negative reaction came from my ex-husband after he read Love Sick–though I think I’m quite generous toward him in the book.  Let’s just say he and I are no longer friends.  Nevertheless, I don’t think my job as a writer is to protect anyone’s feelings. Rather, it’s to break silences, to write my own feelings, tell my own stories.

Question #4:

What advice do you have for writers who keep their stories unwritten from fear of making difficult situations public?

Know that your story is important, it belongs to you, it’s okay to tell your secrets.

My main sadness as a writer and as a daughter in my family is that I didn’t write my truths while my parents were still alive.  Only by telling our family truths could we have been an authentic family. Only by telling my secrets can I be an authentic woman. This is the only way for me to be an authentic writer, as well.

Why didn’t I write my first memoir while my parents were still alive?  Sure, I was still trying to write fiction at that time.  But I was also in mid-therapy when they died, not yet sure enough of my own woman-power. Still timid. Still trying to be the “good” girl my parents raised.  Even years after the abuse ended, I remained, emotionally, that battered, wounded little girl. I didn’t want to anger my father or upset my mother. Well into adulthood, I maintained the facade, the lie, the pretense of a perfect family.  Now, however, post-therapy, I’m no longer timid.  After years of silence, I have a voice.

In terms of advice, I think one of the most important things when writing memoir is to maintain the focus on yourself.  Concentrate on your secrets.  After all, memoir is about revealing your story.  Sure, other people (friends/relatives) play a role in our lives, but ask yourself: how do these people affect me.  If you are your focus, then you should, hopefully, be on fairly solid ground when you go public.  I would not, for example, reveal a secret that’s my sister’s, one that has nothing to do with me.  In other words, I want to emphasize that telling secrets is not about revenge.  If you do write your memoir from a place of revenge or (only) anger, then, chances are, the memoir will be shrill and hollow–and not reveal the emotional truth we all seek.  We write to reveal and understand the complexities of ourselves, of our relationships.

So, I urge all of you to write your stories.  Women writers, in particular, have been silenced for too long, have been made to feel as if our stories aren’t worthy.  They are worthy. (You might check out my article on my web site, “Confessional & (Finally) Proud of It,” which is about my journey through the writing and marketing of two memoirs, at www.suewilliamsilverman.com.)

From a practical standpoint, however, if you are concerned about family reaction, then I might suggest that you write, initially, as if you are writing only for yourself. This can be very freeing.  Just write from your heart and tell your truths without thinking of family or even agents and publishers.  Worry about the “world” later–after you have your story down on paper.

 

With these words, I hope any of you who have a memoir or personal essay inside of you, one that you have been reluctant to write about for fear of telling the truth take Sue William Silverman’s advice to heart and sit down to write. Although, there may be moments when you are moved to tears and must wipe them away or ignore them as you write, there will come a moment when the tears dry and you are in the flow of writing and so absorbed by the task that you are not necessarily feeling the emotions. When you do feel these emotions and the pain and confusion they bring stopping you from writing, take a deep breath. Breathe deeply and remember that you waited a long time to be able to handle the material.  Remember that the worst part is almost over–re-entry into the experience. After you’ve gone there and you are writing, you get to do more than just relive the moments. After you resurrect them on the page, you have the opportunity to use your recounting to change your life. Once you form the inchoate feelings into a strong voice, they have a shape. Once they have a shape they are no longer swirling around chaotically inside of you.  And when chaos changes into shape, you are freed of keeping such big energy bound up inside of yourself. When difficult experience s have a vessel outside of you to live in–the one you created on the page–you are freed from much emotional destruction.