Unlocking Creativity: Elissa Altman Reveals the Radical Power of Saying ‘Yes’ in Memoir Writing

Unlocking Creativity: Elissa Altman Reveals the Radical Power of Saying 'Yes' in Memoir Writing

MDH: While you’re warning the reader of the risks and recommending they go in with eyes wide open, you also say, even if the worst happens, something good comes out of it: “It was the most extraordinarily painful, frustrating, devastating, excruciating, traumatic experience of my life. And yet it was a gift.”

EA: That’s right. You know, there is no gift like the gift of clarity and the gift of transcendence. Not the Emersonian transcendence of course but being able to look back at a situation and really get your arms around the truth of what it was and why it was. Every family comes to the table with something that is carried from generation to generation. As I wrote about in my second book, Treyf, unpacking the immigrant experience of my paternal grandparents was key to understanding my father’s story and my own.

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