Call Me Charlie

Issue 266

You guys,

You often hear me say, don’t write your thoughts or feelings. But in Kate Gies’ memoir, It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished, she demonstrates that it’s compelling to include what you thought or how you felt back when the story occurred, especially if it’s different from how you think and feel about it as you write the story now.

In one instance, Kate tells the story of her first kiss, in which she gets drunk, passes out, and is in and out of consciousness while a guy gropes her and makes out with her. Afterwards, she writes:

“I woke up alone, nauseated and dizzy. I stood and staggered to the hall to find Olivia and tell her I'd kissed someone. I was excited to tell her. I was excited that someone actually wanted to kiss me.”

In today’s Memoir Snob episode I spoke with Kate Gies, and she said that when you are writing memoir there are two you’s to consider: the character you and the writer at the desk you.

When Kate tells the story from her teenage point of view she includes her feelings—she was excited to tell her friend, excited someone actually wanted to kiss her. A few lines down she brings us further into the mind of her younger self:

“I wondered if the boy liked me, if I'd ever see him again. I obsessively worried that with my defenses down, he'd seen the ear and thought I was a freak. I spent days trying to piece together the night, to bring back the feel of his mouth on mine. To make it romantic.”

Sandwiched between these thoughts and feelings from her past, Kate brings in some present knowledge from the writer at the desk:

“Later, I learned someone passed around a Polaroid of me mostly unconscious with the boy and his hands all over me. I learned there were many witnesses. That some of Olivia's friends thought I was a slut.”

The present knowledge is not her thoughts or feelings about the event. It’s what she learned later, including what other people thought of her, but not her reaction to it.

Here are some other things Kate and I discussed:

• How to write about people we love who we’ve also been hurt by

• Kate’s approach to writing analogies

• How metaphors can stand on their own without any reference to how they relate to your story

• How her agent was the most important person in getting her book published

• Why I need a publicist

• The memoirs that have most inspired her writing

Kate said that when she’s reading a memoir and she’s scribbling notes into the margins, that’s when she knows it’s going to be a book that influences her writing.

That was my exact experience with her book. It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished will sit on my shelf between The Glass Castle and The Tender Bar.

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Until next week,

Charlie