Unlocking Creativity: Elissa Altman Reveals the Radical Power of Saying ‘Yes’ in Memoir Writing
EA: That’s a great question. Yes. I have strong feelings about what constitutes the stories that we are allowed “to tell.” That’s a question that comes up in my classes all the time. This is probably a vast oversimplification, and like anything, is not binary—it’s always this way or no way—but if you are directly touched, impacted, changed, or if your worldview is what it is because of something that happened to someone else, and that thing makes you who you are, like the texture of your hair and the color of your eyes, that is also your story to tell. On the other hand, you cannot borrow someone else’s history if it in no way touches your own. For me, I know in my heart if I am stepping over the line. My wife is also my primary reader, and if I have stepped over the line, which is inevitable for every writer, she’ll tell me.
