Guest Post by Heidi Croot
Writing the first-draft hot mess of my memoir was easy—a mudslide down the inky slopes of several thousand journal pages.
- Rewriting countless drafts, fun—an archeological dig I’ve never tired of.
- Restructuring the thing, hell—as I struggled to place backstory at the precise moment of reader thirst.
But none of those ups and downs compared with the anxiety I felt about sending my manuscript to my two aunts and my uncle, who appear frequently in its pages.
I had reason to be nervous.
My memoir is about their eldest sister, my mother—a woman they were estranged from most of their lives, my own longest estrangement from her spanning a mere seven years. My aunts and uncle tried to have my back through the turbulence. An only child, I leaned heavily on their love and support.
Yet as soon as I mentioned I was writing a memoir, I detected frost in the air. Heard rumblings of that old lament, “airing the family’s dirty laundry.”
I understood their wariness.
They were of a generation that preferred to hold troubling family truths underwater with the flat of their palm. I am driven to haul those truths out, towel them down, assess them from every angle. What can they teach us? How might they heal us?
My aunts and uncle don’t read memoir. I knew if they were going to accept my manuscript, I couldn’t just thrust 300+ pages at them and hope for a miracle. I would need to chart a wayfinding course to the genre using signposts and lamplight.
And about two years ago, drawing on what I knew about awareness campaigns from my 35+ years in corporate communication, that’s what I did.
I casually sent them essays by memoirists who acknowledged their vulnerabilities and the challenges of truth-telling.
I sent book reviews and memoir quotations to show what other writers were sharing with the world.
I sent updates on my own project with excerpts from my work-in-progress that I hoped would demonstrate a balanced take on our difficult family circumstances.
This drip-drip-drip approach paid off when the Los Angeles Review of Books published my essay, “How to Tell Your Mother She Can’t Go Home Again,” describing one of the harshest events of my mother’s life (and mine)—her first day in a nursing home, eight years before she died.
With that, my memoir project could no longer be ignored. Nor could its intent, tone or potential reception in the world.
My aunts and uncle read the piece and sent congratulations.
We had taken the first hill.
It was time for the second.
By now the manuscript was ready for beta readers. I promised my relatives a copy but kept them waiting while I finished some edits. One aunt in her eighties complained that at this rate she might not be around to finally read the thing. My uncle asked how it was going. I could hear the other aunt’s fingers drumming from her home in California.
They were eager to read.
Good.
I emailed the pdf to the California aunt. She immediately responded with family stories triggered by my chapters, as well as helpful editorial suggestions and a factual correction.
“For the duration of the reading it was as though my sister were alive, in front of me with all of her strife and fury…” she wrote me when she finished reading. “You’ve done yourself proud, Heidi.”
My beloved writers’ groups responded to this news with jubilance.
Meanwhile, I invited my other aunt, and my uncle and his wife of 50+ years, to my home, where I presented them with coil-bound copies. We spent a convivial weekend enjoying a charcuterie board, tacos, wine, and quiet time as they turned pages.
They didn’t offer encouragement, though my uncle remarked that his avid reading signaled his interest, and his wife dissolved into tears at one point, acknowledging the painful path our family had been forced to take in tangling with my mother.
In my beta reader guidelines, a one-page menu of suggestions I developed for first-time readers on what kind of comments would be most helpful, I had asked for their feedback within a month—one week away as I write this. I’ve invited them back for a second weekend to close that loop. After all, this was a business arrangement: their access to my full work in exchange for their editorial catches and family history tweaks.
No reply yet.
Offering feedback can be challenging when you’re not used to it.
No reason to be nervous, I want to tell them. You’re in safe hands here. It’s going to be all right.
Originally published online in Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, Writescape is delighted to share Heidi’s practical approach to introducing memoir to family members who could be uncomfortable with the form.
Heidi Croot lives in Northumberland County, Ontario, Canada, and is working on a memoir. Her corporate writing has appeared in numerous trade publications, and her creative work in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, Linea magazine, Writescape, the WCDR anthology Renaissance, and elsewhere. You can reach Heidi on Twitter @heidicroot.
Congratulations Heidi, on your courageous journey down that sensitive pot-holed road. A road in which you have no doubt stepped deeply into far too many of the hidden potholes, much to the fear and discomfort of others.
Through the years, I’ve written and shared bits and pieces of my family history and mine while I could still remember, and the response from the younger generation was as best a ” That’s interesting.” No trauma nor drama, how disappointing. (ha)
I’m having the same anxiety now, since my memoir will be published in May next year. I am sure I’ve made mistakes in it (I found an incorrect date (by four years!) in the MS as I proofread it again. And I haven’t offered it to family members- who largely want to remember my alcoholic husband as his best self – which I understand. But somehow, I have to make sense of my own story, and I hope it may help them make sense of theirs. I’m offering excerpts from the book on social media, and so far, people have been kind (or silent). I’ll take that.
Congratulations on being published, Gabi! I’ve heard mistakes are inevitable, so you’re part of a large and sympathetic club. I can’t think of anything more important than making sense of our own stories, and if that clears the windshield for others–what a gift. Silence may simply mean “I’m thinking.” I’ll watch for your book.
In your mind is: “No reason to be nervous, I want to tell them. You’re in safe hands here. It’s going to be all right.”
What might be in their minds? As you rightly say, “Offering feedback can be challenging when you’re not used to it.” — Despite your “suggestion page”.
Congratulations on having undertaken such careful preparation with some of those stakeholders most closely involved.
Good luck!
The beta reader guidelines are like a recipe for people baking their first cake. It gets easier with practice. Meanwhile, all a writer can do is be authentic, offer transparency, and extend a hand. Thank you for your thoughtful, generous response, Ronald.