How to Publish a Memoir and Not Die of Exposure

Go ahead. Write a memoir if you want. But if you think it’s a professional writing act with only professional repercussions, think again. Upon publication, you will be personally exposed. But maybe you don’t have to die from it. Initially, I thought I might.

I always say the memoir writer suffers two points of exposure, first the writing, then then life. Critiques, interest, even voyeurism all collect around the latter mostly, rather than the writing. I would have it more about the writing if I could, but for various reasons, people (especially people not in the writing business) tend to think that in writing a memoir, you have tilted your head over the computer, and the information just came tumbling out. You didn’t write it really; you just told it.

Rather than the truth, which is, you wrote it thoughtfully and for a great length of time, then rewrote it (many times), questioned everything, reassembled with an eye toward narrative arc and themes and metaphors, recreated dialog, and visited the dark halls of hell to relive certain painful moments. Okay, okay. More is involved, they don’t really need to know that to enjoy the book, so I don’t press it. They are much more interested in the content anyway. Pffft to you being a writer. That’s your own conceit.

The content, the life. Now published, if I could, I might take certain things back. You might think that too, after the fact. But it’s no point in wallowing there. Once it’s in print and at least 500 people have it in their hands or on their bookshelf or even under their kitchen table to balance the fourth leg, your life as told belongs to the big soup of human endeavors.

Of course, a good memoir tells the truth, and exposure is an inevitability when you write a memoir. So, buck up memoir writers and be prepared. This is my own ass-kicking mantra created in my brain to play on repeat, which you may use as the situation demands.

But let’s talk about the ramifications of exposure of this personal sort. Not the reviews, not the fanfare. The personal stuff that creates an internal shift, caused mostly from people you know. The truth is, things happen when you publish your memoir and put it out into the world, personal things. By way of amusement and warning to my fellows, here’s a recap of what’s happened to me personally so far:

• · My Handy Man resurfaced. You know, the one after the divorce and the one before I met my own true love to whom I have been happily married for 30 years. The one featured in the book. He texted me about being afraid to read the book, and then finally bought it and consumed it over three days, while peppering me with text commentary day and night. Lots of compliments about what a beauty I was (ha! says the now 66-year-old) and how smart (see below for interpretation of compliments from nonreaders). And I think I have at last solved the issue of him ever trying to resurrect the relationship which he has tried periodically to do over the years, sight unseen. My husband of 30 years didn’t provide an obstacle as much as the book. Too much truth for romantic imaginings. Now that I recall, that was the sticking point 35 years ago too. Truth? Run for the hills!

• · My husband will not read it. He’s not a big reader, but then I suspect he knows there are love scenes that he is not in. His lack of curiosity is kind of a banner he waves. Maybe that’s even why we have lasted so long and so well.

• · My local bookstore friend called to report that they were selling many copies, and I said, you are hand selling it aren’t you, and she said yes, she was and that she loved the book. This might be something you play to yourself late at night when you are overwhelmed by the certainty that you have no time to promote your own book while publishing so many others.

• · The same bookseller phoned again to report that a woman she had hand sold it to came back in the store, teary and moved, and wanted to meet me, to talk about the book. A brief glimmer of the life Cheryl Strayed or Elizabeth Gilbert regularly live.

• · Your own head. People who are not writers love to say you are a brilliant writer, but it’s harder to believe from people who are lay people and read one book a year.

• · From the writers and booksellers and readers who are consumed by books, one compliment about the beautiful writing puts me in a full swoon for about a week.

• · A woman I depicted in the book recognized herself and reached out to me. She said she read it to her husband, and my characterization was still accurate 40 years later. Yes indeed!

• · My old drinking buddies resurfaced. Uh oh.

• · My old publishing buddies resurfaced, many with whom I had an unresolved parting due to illness and life meltdown (depicted in the book). I got to make it right by them with hugs and dinner.

• · My current authors at Sibylline who read the book started using the book vernacular to address me upon occasion. Metaphor woman I could handle, and I was good with my name shorted to Vic (something my family and dear friends did but not anyone else up to this point). Luckily no one has tried Victim Morgrim (evoking my old last name of Morgan) and a humorous moniker from the early old days. They also try to enlist me in projects by saying we should do The Big Thing which is also in the book. Those who have read it are very familiar with me now and I’ve had to concede that they have crossed over from author to friend as well. So now I have more friends who are authors.

• · All those blurbers who had professional affiliations with me? Same. Immediate intimacy. Now friends. When people read your memoir, they know you as a human. Fiction writers get to stay mysterious and exalted.

• · Occasionally there are book industry folk who didn’t realize I was a writer (which I was even before in the book business 40 years ago and then quietly nurtured on the side over the years). They are amazed and would perhaps be happier to see me in the nonfiction how-to-publish category, not in this sordid world of tell all. I think I would prefer that too actually, but alas my style is personal. No business good can come from it.

• · Then there are all the people you know who have yet to read it, who tend to avoid discussing the book at all. No pressure here folks. No need to avert your eyes. Really.

• · There are all the people I know who took forever to read it, finally do, and then called me and want to discuss. I love these people. It’s like I’ve been sitting naked, fully exposed on their bookshelf for six months, and they only realize this when they crack the book open and start to read. These conversations inevitably lead to their own personal epilogue for the story in which they want to know certain outcomes not identified in the book. Meanwhile, the unread books on friends’ shelves are all like little time bombs waiting to go off and I know I can anticipate great conversations in the future perhaps during another Covid-like interval when they are alone with their bookshelf for months.

• · My girlfriend listened to the audio book and called to say that it was like I spent the week with her there in her own house and she was so happy to hear my voice telling it. Because I run a publishing company 12 to 14 hours a day, I am in danger of losing my old friends as I never visit or call anymore. Ever practical, I thought, this is a solution!

• · My bookkeeper called me and said she never wanted the financial issues revealed in the memoir to happen to me again, and she offered to become my financial coach. I said yes.

• · No word from my ex-husband or previous Foghorn authors on the good ol boy spectrum, all depicted in the book and not favorably. Relief.

• · My niece, with whom I have lost touch, came to an author event. My daughter sat in the front row for another. A sales rep I know and love from the old days attended an event and asked a question. People poured out of the past. The Book Festival folks who built that event with me. The old friends from high school, the one who we raised our kids together. My heart was overcome.

• · My father passed his single copy of the book I gave him all over his small town of 800 people (most over age 65 and excelling in the field of gossip), forgetting in his advanced age perhaps that I expose his leaving my mother for another woman and that his daughter may have been a bit promiscuous in the old days. Everyone does need to know apparently. His father pride outshines his good sense here, I think.

• · Best of all, I’ve reunited somewhat with my brother who is a main character in the story and with whom I have been estranged for decades. We periodically talk on the phone to discuss the book, Sibylline, and, recently to my surprise, any crisis that needs unpacking. There is no talk of starting a new company and so I think we’re entering a new era. It may have been for this outcome that I wrote the book.

So yes, plenty of exposure. No dying as a result. Just little crazy rebirths and resolutions. Memoir writers, I wish you the same.