Imagine Them Reading Your Book
August 30, 2017 § 40 Comments
By Shuly Cawood
My uncle and I stopped speaking to each other almost a decade ago. I loved my uncle, and he loved me, but we had an argument that mushroomed into a cloud so thick neither of us could see through it—until years later, when he got sick, and his prognosis became too grim to keep on refusing to exchange words, especially kind ones. When we did finally speak, just after what would become his final surgery, neither one of us addressed the argument from years before. We knew it was time to put it behind us or else be left with regrets. We held hands, and that became more important than our tender but old hurts.
My uncle died weeks later.
Years before I finished writing my memoir, I sat through panels and lectures on how to decide what to leave in and take out when writing about people in your life. Some authors advocated spilling it all, no matter the consequences. Others advocated for the play-it-safe side, allowing those represented in their memoir to read the manuscript before publication, sometimes even letting them decide what went into the final version.
In my first few memoir drafts, my uncle resided in several chapters. There was even a chapter about our argument: his past, my past, the places where our stories collided and burned. But some things felt too private to air to the world, and I worried about who might get hurt—namely, his family. Eventually, those chapters—and my uncle—were entirely taken out of the book, but there were other people I could not pluck out so easily. My memoir is about love and loss, and a former boyfriend and an ex-husband—whose relationships helped shape who I am today—were integral to my story.
When I started writing my memoir, I had written down any memory that came into my head, even if it was ugly, unfortunate, unflattering. The fights, the breakups, the counseling sessions, all of it went into those early drafts. The anger, too, and especially the blame. Oh, the blame. I had plenty of that.
I revised my “final” manuscript three times. And in those iterations, a shift took place. I was learning to understand better the former boyfriend and ex-husband—not just their actions or inactions, but what they might have feared, how the things I did might have hurt them. I kept imagining what they would think if reading my book. Did I talk enough about my failures? Did I admit to my insecurities, my weaknesses, my mistakes? In the end, I hoped, if nothing else, I had been fair.
The day I signed my book contract, I thought perhaps I should find and give a heads up to my ex-husband. It had been eight years since we had communicated. I didn’t have to find the former boyfriend because years ago he asked me (very nicely) to never contact him again, and I promised him I never would. He is not the type of person to open a shut door, so it’s highly unlikely he will ever know about the book, but if he ever reads it, it’s okay. I have imagined it dozens of times already. The ex-husband, though, I had made no such promise of never contacting, and I decided I needed to track him down. Turns out, I didn’t have to. It was only a day or two later that I opened up my email inbox, and there was a message from him.
“Hi Shuly,” it began. “I found your blog and enjoyed reading your stories. It felt a little strange to find myself in a couple of your stories—it brought back some old memories. I’m happy to see that you are doing what you love. I hope you are well.”
Yes, I had written a few blog posts about our marriage, but they weren’t intimate the way the book was. And if they were strange to read for him, how was a memoir going to feel?
I wrote him back and told him about the book, offering to let him see it. He wanted to read the chapters that had him in it, so we made a deal: I would send a chapter and we would discuss it over email, and then I would send the next, and the next.
We began to pass memories back and forth: the salsa dancing at the Corinthian, the trip to Mexico, the move to North Carolina. We joked about things, too—something we had not done since our marriage. Not surprisingly, some of our memories differed. He didn’t always like the way he was portrayed. Always my question to him was, “But is it fair?” He said it was, for which I was very grateful. He never, not even once, asked me to change what I wrote. He never complained. We communicated more honestly about our relationship in those emails than we ever had sitting on the marriage counseling couch together, sinking into a too-soft and uncomfortable future neither one of us was sure could support us for the rest of our lives. In our emails, we offered respect and regret. Time is a great negotiator of forgiveness. It allowed us a greater perspective, and to speak without blame, to take ownership of our mistakes, and to remember the best parts of our relationship.
Fifteen years ago, after we split up, while I was still smarting from our breakup, he said he hoped one day we would be able to be friends and get coffee together, and I told him, probably not very nicely, that there was no way that was ever going to happen. But now, it feels a little like we have had that coffee—without the coffee. And when my ex-husband said he wanted to buy my book, to read the whole thing, it felt like the kind of success I wanted but never dared to imagine.
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Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of the memoir, The Going and Goodbye (Platypus Press, 2017). She has an MFA from Queens University, and her writing has been published in The Rumpus, Zone 3, Fiction Southeast,Cider Press Review, and The Louisville Review, among others. Her website is www.shulycawood.com.
Thanks For Such a Good Information. keep In Touch
Thank you! I hope it helps other writers.
I love that keep on.
Thank you!
“In the end, I hoped, if nothing else, I had been fair.” This brought tears. It sounds as though you accomplished that. My respect to you. This essay reveals you as a good writer, that you have been willing to find your own flaws and express the humility to share them is a wonderful accomplishment and, to my mind, a necessary element in a successful memoir.
Thank you so much. There were many gifts I got from writing the memoir, but figuring out more about myself, and finding more healing–these were were probably the biggest ones.
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I think there is a middle ground that is tough to find. This is especially true with one’s children. Between ‘everything is copy’ and nothing is – that’s where I try to be.
I was lucky. I do realize there are people who deal with situations and characters that are much tricker than what I dealt with.
An excellent and honest post. I struggle with those same issues. Thank you for sharing your experience and congrats on your book. @sheilamgood at Cow Pasture Chronicles
Thank you so much.
How fascinating- thank you for articulating your process, both as a writer, and as an ex-wife
Thank you!
Beautiful piece about the process of writing your story, your truth and becoming more aware as you go along. Very brave writing.
Thank you so much. 🙂
nice writeup
Thank you so much!
Beautiful and touching
Thank you so much!
This is lovely. Being able to take pause and be expansive in allowing space for others–and the changes and perspective time brings on–is such a gift. I’m so very glad you’d had this experience. What an opportunity to find what had made you love each other to begin with … even if the end is a kind of coffee-less friendship that nonetheless holds a kind of get together. Well done!
Thank you so much. It’s been really good to have more peace between us. A great gift. I am very grateful for all of it.
I wonder if being able to revisit and reclaim part of the relationship one had had, helps reclaim part of oneself that had been packed along with the pain and disappointments of breakup but no longer needs to be. 🙂
I definitely think that it does. I think I was given some freedom because of all of it–freedom from the past.
I enjoyed reading your blog and thanks for sharing. I agree writing a memoir is a journey of emotions and revelations about oneself. I have written an inspirational memoir which will make it’s debut in December.
Thanks for reading and commenting. And congratulations! I hope to see a blog from you on Brevity!
I am working on developing my website trying to learn all about tags, categories, blogging, etc., etc. Writing my memoir was the easy part. My website is rosebingham.com. The name of my book is: BUY THE LITTLE ONES A DOLLY.
Keep on. Beautiful blog. i enjoyed it
Thank you so much for reading it and commenting!
First of all congratulations on completing and publishing a book. Drink a toast to your accomplishment and hold the thought of it finding a wide audience. Your post was one of the best I’ve encountered about your issues with revealing your experiences with others. Reading such things generates moments of self-reflection, because the experiences you write about feels like an alien world to me. I have never had an argument so intense that I didn’t speak to a family member for years. Although I have been annoyed, irritated, briefly so angry that visions of throttling someone danced in my head, I can’t sustain that level of emotion more than a day… simply lack the stamina to engage myself for that long.
Thank you for this note. I’m glad that grudges are difficult for you. Keep it that way!
Absolutely stunning! I wished you both made up, though! That would have been just magical ending!
Thank you! And indeed, that would have made for quite a different ending–perhaps one that required a memoir sequel!
There must be something very raw about whatever experience(s) you had with your uncle. And although there are some experiences not worth reliving, I think that (without reading your memoir) there’s a great possibility that the failure of your relationships may be due to the relationship with your uncle and without those elements in the story, the story is in fact incomplete.
It makes me wonder what the purpose of telling your story is. Roger Ebert once talked about stories and whether they need to be told. If the “final” version of your memoir is incomplete, what is the purpose of telling your story? Does the incomplete version of it really need to be told?
Thank you for the comment, and for reading the blog. A good writer will weave in elements of things that aren’t said, and those things will exist anyway in the story, even if not directly. I’ll let readers decide whether I did that well.
Also, thank you for the philosophical questions you posed about stories and what is “complete.” That sounds exactly like the mind of a writer.
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How wonderful… it’s nice to read a story where you really “thought” about your memoir, what you should keep in, what you should not… I mean about your Uncle and also thinking about “his” family. Also, that the universe brought a note from your ex/husband, so he could review your book. This was special, because it allows you to publish your book and feel free in a “good way.” Thanks for sharing your thoughts/process. I hope your book brings you happiness.
What a beautiful and kind note. Thank you for writing it, and for reading the blog. 🙂
Reblogged this on Notes from An Alien and commented:
Today’s re-blog is a powerful account of a memoir and the author’s dealing with what she wrote…
Wonderful work