Intention versus impact

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”

Gabriel García Márquez

Writing about our lives can be disorienting. Remembering is reliving. What do we make of the feelings we unearth?

Hindsight and (I hope) maturity shape my perceptions of the past. The challenge has been to constantly remind myself that people’s good intentions should not minimize or invalidate the impact of their actions. Writing about our lives can be disorienting, yes, and for sure painful. To me, though, writing about my life has also been an exercise in self-understanding and self-forgiveness. I too did all I did with the best of intentions.

A writing coach I worked with some years ago, when what I now call a memoir was only a jumble of nonlinear notes without a clear throughline, taught me a helpful trick: For every scene you consider reconstructing, ask yourself, what purposes does it serve? What is the point of the scene? How does it serve your story?

As I trudge through another round of revisions on my manuscript, I’ve had to dig deeper, searching for the telling moments that shape my foundational wounds. The other day, Cecilia Lyra, my agent, whose guidance and unbending faith in me and my story have kept me going, wrote to me —

Taking time to examine oneself is VERY important in a memoir. That might look like wallowing (which I know is not your jam) but it’s not: It’s connecting with one’s emotions. Readers connect with emotionality and vulnerability. I get that you are protecting your privacy (and that of those you love). I get that you are also protecting yourself (examining your emotions will no doubt lead to suffering… and you’re not someone who is comfortable suffering… you say it all the time, how you are a positive person). And I absolutely get that you are strong because you’ve had to be strong. But none of these things changes the fact that if the reader doesn’t see you experiencing active emotions (fear + desire conveyed through surprise — imo, the one you struggle with is fear), they will stop reading a book. 

So I dig, and I write, and I cry, and I dig, and I cry, and I laugh, too, and I write, and write, and write.

With love and purpose, always.

Fernanda.