I recently workshopped a new memoir chapter I had been working on, and it wasn’t until after I left the workshop that it occurred to me that perhaps the distinction between the author and the narrator had gotten jumbled in the evaluation of the piece.
I don’t enjoy self-deprecating memoirs, but I had written a rather self-deprecating line to make a point about my past.
“We don’t see you this way,” someone said.
I didn’t get the sense that she was suggesting I needed to show evidence in the work to prove I was that way in the past. I think she was surprised to see my negative statement and was concerned that I had low self-esteem that wasn’t based on fact.
I rambled off some explanation that only made me sound more pathetic and weird, and then I left feeling exposed and awkward. But I was trying to explain the person I was—not the person I am today.
I believe good writing takes readers into the feelings of a particular moment in time. When I write about myself, I think back to how I felt when I was going through a particular period. I try not to censor myself. I try to be true to who I was at that time.
Maybe I need to write in double perspective. Perhaps I need to explain right up front that who I was then is now who I am now. But I feel like writing and reading is a journey, and I think sometimes you have to wallow in the past a bit before explaining away and fixing things, and saying, “I’m alright! I’m alright! Don’t worry about me. My story gets better.”
I’m okay with who I was in the past. I love that shy little middle-schooler and I love that twenty-something who was naïve and nervous and emotional, and I don’t want to change her. She is the foundation for who I am today. But she is not who I am today.
The person I am today is not someone who you can get to know in one chapter or one blog post. I am not someone who you get to know over one semester. And I am not the same person in the office as I am when I’m at home. I’m not someone easily identified by the types of books I read, and I hope no one would ever judge me on my indulgent music playlist. (I think I almost lost a few friends the day I posted on Facebook that I don’t like Radiohead.)
And I hope tomorrow I’m not the same person I am today. Maybe that’s self-deprecating. Or maybe it’s just honest.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 