Putting Truth to the Page in Memoir Writing
Have you ever considered unraveling that powerful story that resides within you and crafting it into an honest, truth-telling, life-changing memoir? Based on how many times I’ve been asked how I wrote mine, my guess is that you have.
(I Let Extended Family Back Into My Life. They Were Ill-Prepared for My Career as a Writer.)
From the outside, it doesn’t seem so difficult. You just sit and put your story on the page, right? Well, yes and partly, but maybe your story has deep trauma, as many memoirs do. What if sharing your story would make you feel less safe with your family, your friends, or even the world around you? Should you still face and then share your truth?
I’m a gay veteran, a retired Senior Chief Petty Officer, who had a very successful 22-year career in the US Navy. I was 18 years old when I joined and, after I stumbled around for a bit, I found a home within the ranks. The arduous work, long deployments, and sleeping on a paper-thin mattress with the flight deck as my ceiling while planes landed right above my head were not my favorite things—but I was great at my job and I loved my shipmates. It was the policy against gay service members that I hated the most. I served my first 10 years prior to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, when gay service members were witch-hunted by NCIS and my remaining 12 years were during DADT, which was just a tad bit better than the former policy, but any bit was a step in the right direction.
Eleven years after retiring, in 2017, I hit a painful bottom with hiding my gayness. This timeframe led to my awareness of when, how, and why I fell into hiding, and how my calling was to come back out. It also led to my initial writing, which was intended to be a self-help book about all-things-hiding and the coming out process. I worked on that book until 2020, when I became stuck. Really stuck.
It’s now four years later and my memoir, Hiding for My Life: Being Gay in the Navy, will be released in early June. How did I get from that stuck place to here? By honoring and putting my truth on the page.
If you’d like to venture into doing the same, here are some thoughts.
Write your entire life—to you.
To understand how I got “here,” I had to know where I began, so I wrote a chronological list of everything I remembered. Each day I sat and wrote the next thing on that list and duplicated that process until I was done. I called this my “puking” phase. There were experiences I hadn’t faced or spoken of for decades and I sobbed buckets of tears as I wrote my memories. I didn’t worry about grammar or structure or voice, I just had to get what was eating me up out of my body. If I did nothing else than this step, I still would have been a changed person.
Find a writing coach/course.
After “puking,” I discovered a wonderful writing coach. She read and listened to my pain with deep compassion. As I shared my pages with her, she encouraged me to shift my vision from the self-help book to writing a memoir.
Read your words out loud.
I did this first alone and to myself (many times in front of a mirror to bear witness to my pain), then to my coach, and also a close friend. There’s a real heartbreak combined with a deep healing that occurs when you hear your pain expressed from your own voice. There were parts of my story that I couldn’t speak for a very long time without breaking down. Today, I still have deep sadness over those events, but I can talk about that which used to bring me to my knees.
Be open to changing your point of view and your tense.
Once I had a basic draft, I could feel myself hovering over the page. So, I shifted my voice from third to first person and my tense from past to present. This is when I truly fell into my story, which changed everything and allowed for deeper clarity and perspective. Reliving my journey helped me not only have compassion for myself, but also everyone else on the page, because I could see their humanity, their reasons, and their pain.
Check out Karen Solt’s Hiding for My Life here:
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Share your draft.
This was a no-joke tough thing to do, especially sharing it with those who were written on the page. I felt raw, and the initial feedback was tough, as witnessing someone else’s pain about my pain hit deeply. However, with each response, I started to notice that everyone, and I do mean everyone, had a different perspective. This has helped me see that I am not my book and I could let go of needing a specific response. This alone was very freeing.
Find your ideal path to publishing.
There are many ways to get your book out into this world, and I highly encourage you to find which way best suits you. I initially tried to go the traditional route and searched for an agent. But I hated the process and was resistant. Then I was advised to change it to a polemic memoir, which would confront the Navy and make it more sellable. That didn’t feel right either. So, I consulted with my writing coach and submitted my manuscript to an all-women hybrid company that she had prior experience with, and it was accepted. I keep the rights to my book. No one can alter my truth. I have a say in each step of the process. All the professional milestones of traditional publishing are met. This is my best path.
My final thoughts are that putting truth to the page is a huge coming out process. It’s vulnerable and scary and it is certainly not easy. But as my very wise therapist (oh yeah, get a therapist) once said to me, “Karen, it can’t break you. You’ve already survived it.”
Nothing in my life has transformed or liberated me like writing my memoir has. Seriously, it has changed me.
Yours will change you too. Pinky promise.
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