My Memoir Evolves: Or, How I Stopped Writing About My Brother and Learned to Love Memoir
In which my writing transforms itself.
Memoir Editing Update
My goal is to reach 98,000 words by the time of the Atlanta Writer’s Conference, May 6-7, which I am attending. Initially, my “final draft” was 203,000 words. I gave it “one last edit” and ended at 168,000 words. I knew that was still too long, but I sent it to readers. I’ve had very few responses - busy lives, not polished enough, etc. I started learning about manuscript review and developmental editing. Memoirs that get traditionally published generally do not exceed 100,000 words. So I set a goal for the conference - 98,000 words. I’ve been editing again for the past few weeks.
The manuscript now stands at 125,000 words. I have one section left to edit: Part V, whch is 64,000 words. I’ve been trying to cut every chapter by 50%, but mostly running about 40%. If I cut 40% of 64,000 words, that’s 25,600 words - I’ll just make my cut. Considering that a chunk of that is notes in the back, I am confident that I can make these cuts by the conference deadline.
After the conference, depending on the outcome and advice I get from the editors I speak with, I will pursue a manuscript edit or developmental edit (if it’s not too costly), to increase my chances for traditional publication. If you would like to consider donating to my efforts, let me know in the comments below. Every little bit helps. I can set up a gofundme or kickstarter or patreon account for the effort.
The Owl Shop - Cigar Bar and Writer’s Habitat
The Owl Shop in New Haven, CT became a refuge for me from a bad teaching job. The students at Southern were unruly and disrespectful, glorified high school students. One student slept in class and had the nerve to say he had an accommodation to sleep in class because of his busy athletic career. It was a mess. When a student became increasingly hostile on three consecutive days (had to be pulled away by friends and was filmed by other students in the class) and yet was cleared to continue with the class, I knew that my fight would only go so far. Might as well embrace what good I had in life.
I had quit smoking years before, but I didn’t mind being around the occasional cigar. I found a couple I liked and the bar had a fantastic selection of bourbon. So, after work, with my partner busy with her own work, I’d camp out in The Owl Shop and write. The waitresses were attentive, kind, and helpful, without being clingy. The leather sofas and chairs and low lighting set the mood for the perfect relaxation spot. There were days when it was entirely too crowded and smoky, or times when the rain was cold and made the smoke cling to everything. But overall, it was a time to relax with a bourbon or two and a cigar. The bar also offered small batch beer brews. But some of them were quite strong. I remember drinking one - just one pint, mind you - and the room spun and my vision doubled. It was really good but far stronger than I was used to.
Finding My Brother Lost in Time
At first, as I wrote about my brother, I wasn’t entirely sure where this bio was going. He had died 14 years earlier. This was old news. I had the refrain “I am my brother / I am not my brother” in my brain. But I realized I didn’t know a lot about my brother. My sister helped me fill in some of the gaps, though we often didn’t agree on some of the memories. I wanted to make sure to be true to my experience and not rely on her memories. And that’s when I first thought this piece is more about me than my brother.
I wrote to my brother’s friend, the pastor who took over his job in Spokane when my brother moved to Portland. He provided some papers that my brother had written, analysis of words from a Bible passage, a lesson my brother had written for one of his sermons. It was comforting to see my brother’s left-handed scrawl and the intensity of his religious conviction in his writing.
I wrote to another of my brother’s church friends who had moved to Texas, who spoke lovingly of my brother and his family.
I wrote to a colleague who had worked with my brother at NAMI in Portland. He was a kind man who corresponded willingly at first, but he either couldn’t get his hands on papers that he had offered or didn’t have permission from NAMI to share them. He soon stopped writing back.
I wrote to a friend of my brother’s and sister-in-law’s, my sister-in-law’s best friend, who was in the last weeks of dying of cancer. Pam didn’t want me to write about my brother. My sister, too, was reluctant that I should reveal a lot about my brother. I wanted to learn more about my brother’s illness - major depressive disorder - so I sent away for copies of his psychiatric reports. Unfortunately, the reports could only be released to next of kin, which means his daughters control that information - my nieces, my brother’s oldest and youngest - people I am not in touch with.
I wrote to my brother’s psychiatrist, who explained that his illness was biological as sure as cancer.
I did all I could to find out what I could about my brother from his friends and family and professional acquaintances, not taking anything on family lore or hearsay.
What I knew and what I felt about my brother didn’t change a great deal from what I started with. I realized I wasn’t after physical manifestations of my brother’s life. I was searching for the intangible that both connected and separated us. My brother and I were quite alike, uncannily so - but he had major depressive disorder and I did not. My life fell apart at the same time as his, but I kept fighting against what I perceived to be injustices and other people’s mental illnesses, while he succumbed to his disease.
The Power of Memoir in the Back of My Mind
A colleague of mine, Syndee Wood, an adjunct professor in San Diego, had written a memoir for her graduate degree. It was as experimental as could be, raw emotion captured, the difficult family history laid bare for all to see, a survivor’s story. It played like a movie in the back of my brain. That’s the kind of writing this story needed. I read her story before I moved from San Diego to New Haven in 2018. About the time of hanging out at The Owl Shop (Fall 2018 onward), I read Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, an experimental literary memoir with an LGBTQ connection.
Having spent the great majority of my life in a tangential alternative lifestyle community, and having experiences that could be compared to Tiresias in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, all the parts started to fall into place as to what I was really writing. I was writing my own story, not my brothers. I was trying to figure out why I didn’t succumb to mental illness the way my brother did, and yet, why my life still fell apart in such spectacular fashion.
My life’s plot was a quest for relationships defined by unconditional love, and the landscape of my life was a waste land, both physically with the California drought and spiritually and morally, with the bankrupt morality of evil bosses, misguided mental health practitioners, self-serving spouses and a malicious narcissist.
Next time, I’ll explore more how T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land became the controlling metaphor for my memoir.
Until then, be well, my friends.
As for me, I’ll….
Just keep writing!
Things come into focus for Lee at The Owl Shop in New Haven. Cigars, leather furniture; attentive and kind - without becoming clingy - waitresses. And drinkable bourbon with powerful small batch brew behind. He’s on track to finding a brother “lost in time.”