“Memoir is the hardest writing there is.”

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[Today’s post is the first of my summer series responding directly to reader and listener requests. Thanks for being a paid subscriber, James Walker. I appreciate your support.]

I’ll tell you a little story about writing and then another story about my mother. Both stories are about things that terrify me.

Listen, every poet I know has an aura. This is because they’re committed first to creating art. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Other times it’s gnarly art. But good poetry always feels like it came from somewhere else even as it clarifies our world. Like looking through the top of a glass case in a museum. Screenplays and essays are what is implied by their names: they’re play; they are to assay (to examine or take a journey of the mind).

My weapon of choice is most commonly fiction. I love fiction because of the control I can exert over the universe in my head. Characters may act in unexpected ways, but I never doubt that they’re mine. Making up people and scenarios is almost as much fun as a person should be legally allowed to have.

The first story I want to tell you relates to nonfiction writing. I’m terrified of writing about things that happened. Leaving aside the prospect of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong time, writing about real life often feels like scooping myself out with a melon baller. And that’s when it feels good. When I write bad fiction, I only feel dumb. But that’s not a permanent feeling. I know that parts of me are smart, and other parts are a golden lab and that’s okay. I can virtually always make fiction better, given a reasonable amount of time.

But when I write bad nonfiction it feels far, far, far worse because either I’m lying to myself or, worse, I don’t understand my own life (or the world) or, even worse still, I don’t want to understand my own life (or the world).