Close to the Bone: Writing Family Secrets
Over the weekend, I was at my aunt’s house and I was looking for a fork. I opened every kitchen drawer and found no silverware. Finally, I gave up and asked where a guy might find a fork? Turns out that my aunt has a concealed drawer that opens up above a drawer that holds ordinary kitchen utensils. Who knew? A secret drawer that holds the silver. My aunt said in jest, “That’s to keep people like you from stealing the silver.”
Writers steal all the time, and often we steal from the people we love. We’re always after that secret drawer, the one that would go unnoticed without our efforts. We want to pull that sucker open and shout to the world, “Look at this!”
Another one of my aunts was displeased with me when I “borrowed” a family tale she told me that I put into a short story. That story ended up being published in Yankee magazine, which I thought my aunt would never see. She didn’t, but a neighbor staying at a B and B in Vermont did, and she carried word back to my aunt who was mortified. It wasn’t proper to reveal a family story even if it was disguised as fiction. “I’m never telling you anything again,” my aunt said. “You’ll just put it into a story.”
Guilty as charged. I’m always looking for anything I can use in a piece of writing, whether it be a small detail like the fact that another aunt lit her cigarettes from a gas burner on the stove, or something larger like the fact that when my grandfather was going to lose the family farm and asked my uncle for help, my uncle refused. I’m always on the lookout for the small things that make up the texture of a life and the large decisions that have consequences for years to come. Often, a writer knows the world best through his or her own family.
“Once a writer is born into a family,” Czselaw Milosz said, “that family is doomed.” We might as well accept it. A writer is expert at the art of revealing what people suppress or perhaps don’t even know they carry. We cut through the masks that people wear. We get down below the skin to the truth of who people are when they’re alone in the dark. Along the way, we’re going to hurt some feelings, perhaps even risk relationships that matter greatly to us, all for the sake of the art.
What’s a family secret you wouldn’t want known? Tell the story of it. Be ruthless. Tell it all, no matter how ugly it is. Feel what it’s like to write close to the bone. You never have to share this with anyone. It’s your choice. But for the sake of everything that you’ll eventually write, you need to feel what it’s like to say the hard things, to lay oneself open, to be honest and direct. Don’t wait. Do it now.
This was a concise and helpful piece about memoirs. I write fiction and steal from my life and the lives of others constantly, yet writing an actual memoir sends shivers everywhere. I’ll be sure to look for your book.
Thank you, Jacqueline. I appreciate your reading my blog and taking time to leave a comment.
What good advice — to just write it for ourselves. I’ve held back writing some things for fear of what others might think. How stupid that it never occurred to me that I don’t have to show it to anyone. Thank you. And I hope your book is released in the Barnes & Noble Nook format soon. I could download it to my computer with my Kindle app, but I like to get away from the computer at the end of the day.
Thanks for your comment, Jayne. Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to say the tough things, even if we’re only saying them to ourselves.
This is what’s keeping me writing. I have been in the practice of slowly and systematically silencing the loyalty to my loved ones in the course of writing my first memoir, out of which poetry has spilled. It’s started with the seemingly benign, then I get to a root. Lee’s essay made me think of an instance about which I can write — one that led to my choice as a woman, to be on a particular path and make the tough decisions that women have to make.
Amy, I’m glad that something I said led you to some material. Keep doing the good work!
Family members can also lead to discovery. I wrote two stories using events that had happened in 1949. I had a sister a year younger than I; I made the sister in the story a year or two older than the her brother. Both stories were published in the mid-1980s. My discovery was that the changed age was emotionally correct. In our middle school and early high school years, my sister was treated like, given the responsibilities of and acted like an older sister.
Carl, that’s very interesting. I’m presenting a class at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Alaska next week about the intersections between memoir and fiction and how fictionalizing our own lives often leads us to truths we might otherwise have missed.
Such wise advice, Lee. There is something different about writers, maybe the need to testify. Which family members sometimes read as “sell out.” Well, that’s a matter of perspective.
Richard, I was on an AWP panel about this very topic of selling out family members. How do we avoid it if we’re writing honestly?
Social media has ruined me. I just tried to “like” several of these comments.
Well said, Mr. Martin. As a newspaper columnist, I’ve written about my family nearly every week for nine years. My husband has accepted that he’s fair game, but I ask my sons (12 and 14) for permission before I submit a piece that mentions them. I was late on this practice, though. It only came about after a couple of instances of, “You’re not going to write about this, are you, Mom?” There’s a guilt in that.
Hi, Jennifer! An editor told me once, “Remember, you volunteered to be in your memoir, but other people didn’t.” Still, I think that sometimes I have to write about family members in order to better understand who I am when I’m among them. Thanks so much for your comment!
A useful article, Lee. I wrote briefly about the poor relationship I had with my mother in my recently published memoir “Instant Whips and Dream Toppings: A true-life dom rom com.” Interestingly, as a result, other members of my family have told me anecdotes re what was going on within the family at the time I was born which now make me appreciate perhaps a little more of what was going on in my mother’s head at the time which may have led to her treating me like she did. I can’t be sure… but it has certainly given me food for thought!
Hi, Jacky! I had that same experience with my first memoir. When someone starts taking–the writer, that is–people usually start talking back and what they can be illuminating. Thanks for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment.
I so needed to read this today. Was reading an interview with Marion Winick (sp) in Redivider last night and she is strongly on the side of don’t write about the people you love without them knowing about it first. I’ve written and published a couple of pieces about my father in obscure literary magazines where he likely won’t ever see them. He wants me to write about his life ….but I suspect not exactly in the way I am writing about it. The guilt is getting to me, but the desire to keep going, and keep trying to publish, is strong. I hope my children don’t grow up to be writers.
Hi, Amy! Thanks for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment. I guess I’m more of the belief that I can’t let anyone in my writing space–both the actual room and the emotional room inside me–while I’m writing memoir.
Yes, I agree Lee, totally, and it is a question I had to sort out when writing my book, “Trapped: My Life With Cerebral Palsy”, in which every word is written close to the bone. I would emphasise that bit about not showing (all) your writing to anyone else. Unless you want to break their hearts, that is.
Thank you.
Fran Macilvey 🙂
http://franmacilvey.wordpress.com/telling-stories
Hi, Fran! Thanks so much for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment. You’re so right to point out that if we do decide to show our work to loved ones, we should do so with the knowledge that our writing can have real-life consequences.
Tobias Wolff has quoted his mother thus: “If I’d known both my boys were going to be writers, I might have lived a little differently.” And Geoffrey Wolff remembers her saying, when This Boy’s Life followed Duke of Deception, ”Well, I guess that’s it now. That’s all the boys I have.”
Thanks for those quotes, Irene! And thanks, too, for reading my blog and taking the time to leave a comment.
Ohh…I like this very much! I have something I’ve been writing on for years and haven’t “let it out” because I was worried someone might get their feelings hurt. This is just the little push I needed to set it free! Thanks!
Good luck with it, Tina!
It’s not that they would kill me; it’s that they would give me that horrid, piercing, blank look, that shake of the head that confirms my insanity, the looks shot across the room concurring I have never really been one of them. It’s the silent shunning from the people who shape/shaped my life that makes me think twice – three times before placing them in a story.
Admittedly, I then write the story…
Oh, I know that look so well! My experience tells me I would get it even if I never wrote about my family 🙂 Thanks so much for taking the time to read my blog and to leave a comment.
I found this post well over a year since its original post. I literally Googled, “Should a writer put family secrets in a story” as I am finally embarking on a piece meant for others to read. Whether or not I use this particular family secret will be up to me, but I thank you for the guidance. Whether we should use others’ stories or our secret stories created with them feels somewhat like a moral dilemma but it is truth and that is what I feel I owe most as a writer – truth. I really enjoyed the follow up comments, too. And wow, a talk on “how fictionalizing our own lives often leads us to truths we might otherwise have missed” really resonated with me. This has happened to me and I believe will happen even more as I move forward with this piece.
Hi Heidi. Thanks so much for reading my blog and for taking the time to leave a comment. I wish you much success with the work you’re doing.
[…] “Tell the story of it. Be ruthless. Tell it all, no matter how ugly it is. Feel what it’s like to write close to the bone. You never have to share this with anyone. It’s your choice. But for the sake of everything that you’ll eventually write, you need to feel what it’s like to say the hard things, to lay oneself open, to be honest and direct. Don’t wait. Do it now.” ~ Lee Martin, Close to the Bone: Writing Family Secrets […]