Unlocking the Truth Behind Memoir Missteps: Why Emotional Insight Is the Missing Key
I can’t remember everything that made it necessary to invent a life that was only half-true, to hang on to that until it felt—at least to me—all true. I can’t even tell you where I got the courage to let the mask start to drop away. But, what I found when I did was more captivating than my Chandleresque stories, more interesting than the facts, more universal.
The space between the stories and the facts—where feelings and fears had hidden themselves—is made of compassion and identification. What had been bar stories with an unlovable narrator became dozens of personal essays that’ve found homes in literary journals, anthologies, and academic syllabi. I’ve written hundreds of new pages, rewrites and free writes, and continue doing the work of teasing out, to paraphrase Vivian Gornick, the stories behind our situations.
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