In earlier blogs, I’ve pondered how memoirs are influenced by what we actually remember as well as by what elements of a given memory we choose to include.
A thought-provoking article in Sunday’s New York Times by the author André Aciman explores yet another question … the extent to which the things we write permanently alter what we remember.
My memoir, Sailing Down the Moonbeam, drew on journal entries I made during my three-year sailing voyage from New York to New Zealand, including nearly a year on the Pacific Ocean. However, many of those journal entries were prompted by anger and frustration as Tom and I tried to adjust to life in a small and often constrained environment. Those journal entries—and the memories they elicited—weren’t false, but they were often incomplete and/or one-sided versions of the actual events.
Twenty years later, as I began writing Moonbeam, I had to consider Tom’s “side of the story.” What I wrote in my memoir reflected my attempt to be a credible witness to my own story. But four years later, what I now “remember” about those events is very different from the record in my journal. In more than one instance, the memory that prompted me to write the memoir has been completely erased or significantly rearranged.
Curiously, a similar issue arises with my novel. Not long after my husband and I separated, I became involved in a love affair with a woman. For a time, it was exciting and exhilarating, but the ultimate significance of our relationship was not the sexual dimension. It was the extent to which her personality made her a stand-in for my husband … the extent to which the dynamics of my marriage persisted in this new relationship.
Unfortunately, the factual details of that relationship—the inspiration for the novel—don’t always offer the kind of dramatic action a novel needs. And so, my characters take action based on the demands of the genre rather than the facts of my story.
And, of course, with every new scene I write, my memory of what actually happened is rearranged.