Writing Truth in a Memoir - Four Tips
Telling the truth in a life story may seem simple, but "it ain't necessarily so!"
Writing Truth in a Memoir - Four Tips
To begin with, the truth may not be evident. Was mum nurturing? Your brother says, "yes" and you say, "not really!" Who is telling the truth? It often comes as a surprise to life writers to learn that the truth they believe potential in a story is a personal interpretation, one of many versions of the truth.
How much truth should you tell? When I don't mention that mum spent hours on the phone every afternoon and hardly greeted us when we returned from school, have I crossed over into creating a lie about the truth of her relationship to her children?
How should you tell the truth? Gingerly? Brashly? So vaguely that no one will grasp what you are writing about?
It's easy to see that in writing your life stories, you will not be able to bypass problems about truth. In the end, the way you think about truth and how to tell it will work on the what, the how, and the why of your story.
Here are some guidelines to help you write the truth in your memoirs.
1) Facts are the baseline of truth. As the climatic characteristic on a cold day can be verified by reading a thermometer, facts can also be verified by referring to authenticating sources (people, documents, records). Sometimes issues that families debate are honestly a matter of communal record.
Did mum graduate from high school in 1939 or 1940? Arguing the date is a waste of time: it can be authenticated by a visit-or a phone call-to her high school.
All stories, even those you reckon true beyond doubt, must be cross-checked if the "facts" run counter to another person's memory. Verification is all the more valuable if you are basing an interpretation of your story on these facts. Go to relatives, documents (letters, diaries, newspaper accounts, etc.), communal records (birth, census, death, tax), library, etc., in order to duplicate check your facts.
Authenticate your facts beyond reasonable doubt. In the end, as a life writer, you are a historian who must verify facts to build a solid case for your version of history. Even one piece of dubious facts can cause your readers to lose faith in all your stories.
Attribute your version of the truth to yourself when you cannot find documentation to back uncertain "facts." An honest, workable solution is naturally to write "I believe my grandparents lost their house in 1953 because..."
2) Other "facts" in your life stories may be easy to value as incredible or impossible because logical sequencing of events contradicts them. For instance, your daughter was born in 1968; she cannot perhaps remember how she loved to sleep over at your parents' apartment on Lincoln Avenue because they moved away from there in 1967.
3) Learn to distinguish the disagreement between truth that is relevant and truth that is irrelevant. In some matters, digging too deeply can sometimes be a waste of time.
For example, do you honestly need to authenticate either it was John or James who pushed you off the swing when you were four and you broke your collar bone? John says it was James; James says it was John. After fifty years, a fog has rolled over your family's communal memory. You have no wish to carry out a vendetta. Beyond idle curiosity, who pushed you is irrelevant. More arresting is your learning feel and how your family members reacted. You need to write about your visit to the doctor, the tender care you got at home, the status you had in the neighborhood as a result--not about who was guilty. In this instance, you might write: "According to John, James did it and, agreeing to James, John was the culprit. At any rate, I had an arresting trip to Dr. Muzzey and got to watch cartoons for a week...." More truth than that is naturally immaterial and nit-picky. It is not worth pursuing.
4) Attribute to someone's concept what cannot be authenticated. Whenever you determine that pursuing the truth is irrelevant or impossible (e.g., events occurred a long time ago and everybody complicated is now gone), you can embed the concept in a phrase that makes it clear whose it is. Use phrases like "My brother Francis believes that...," "My mum all the time said that...," "According to me...."
Do take that step of arresting your memory by checking the facts to the fullest extent potential and practicable. If no clear, verifiable truth emerges as irrefutable, remember that your extreme goal is to record your version of the truth-not someone else's. (Writing their version is their job!)
Good Luck writing!
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