Reflections on Writing a Memoir

One thing I wonder most about writing a memoir is how you decide what event is the right one share. How do you choose from the many things, good and bad, that have happened to you? What if many things have happened to you? Or none at all? What if you want to convey a certain message in your piece but no one sees it for what it is? What do you do then? Do you go along with it and pretend they understand what you meant or do you tell them: “Actually, I know you thought you picked up on the subtle message I was attempting to convey to you but you were like one hundred percent wrong about what I was saying so please, I’m just asking you to read my mind here…” What if you weren’t even sure you wanted them to know the real story you were telling. How do you decide? What if you think there could be consequences for speaking your truth? What if you always turn your writing into an angsty metaphor for things that have happened to you while trying to write a blog post for your English class? As for my own memoir I am worried that it will be too personal. I want to write about a memory that’s important to me but those things tend to be the hardest to share with other people. If I wrote about something with less importance, however, it would probably be bland and uninteresting. No emotion to speak of. That, I think is worse than taking a risk and showing a piece of yourself that you might not share otherwise. I know that when you take the risk it usually pays off somehow but it feels like this:

You’re at the edge of a cliff, about to fall past the smoky gray clouds into the abyss below. You know that you’ll be caught by the parachute you’re wearing but you’re not being pushed. You don’t get that luxury. You must jump. And the first moments as you begin to plummet are the most terrifying of the entire experience. They are the worst because in a way nothing has happened yet. All you can hear are your own fears.