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When A Memoir is Born Early
Self-disclosure of an old story with new urgencies
My memoir will come to life in the next few years. Even though it’s only a “zero” draft now, I’m hopeful that one day soon it will take its first breaths with the help of a publishing house.
Something has been nagging me, though.
What happens when a memoirist births her book, offers it to the world, and then her perspectives grow a little?
Before reading the draft, an editor and writing coach will ask why my story needs to be told right now. Maybe she’ll say that most memoirists ought to be older than 42. Give the book another 10 years to gestate, she’ll advise. Introspection and maturity aren’t the same thing, after all.
And I’ll tell her I can’t.
I was just past my teen years when I gave birth to my oldest child. 16 years and five more children later, I had a manic episode and had to be tied to a hospital bed. I was diagnosed with bipolar 1.
Thanks to my mental illness, I’ve messed up my kids and husband in ways I don’t yet know the extent of.
As a would-be reader, you’d think it was guilt that’s kept me tapping at the computer keys. But that’s not why I’m writing this book. It’s the fact that for the millions of us moms who are…
