Author and editor Sari Botton on giving yourself permission to write personal essays

 While there’s definitely room for sensational essays and memoirs by people who have had outrageous experiences or who are famous for one reason or another, that’s actually not the meat and potatoes of the first-person category, and it’s not what dedicated fans of this kind of writing seek in it.

No, the primary job of the essayist or memoirist is to use the craft of writing to illuminate and make meaning of the ordinary, to name or crystallize experiences that are incredibly common in such a way that readers understand their own versions of those common experiences anew.

 I was so fraught with fear. I was overcome with fear about writing this memoir, putting it out in the world. I had had a lot of experiences where I hadn’t made the best choices about what I revealed about myself and other people. I had arrived at a new idea about how to do this that felt more ethical, but I was still scared. 

Every night, at like 3 in the morning, I would say, “You know, you don’t have to do this,” and I would let myself off the hook, and I would say, “You know what? I’m just not gonna do it.” And then I would wake up at 7, and I was like, “Of course I’m going to do it. Of course. I have to do it.” Something I’ve learned about myself is it’s an unfortunate part of my creative process that I have to ruin things for myself before I can go through with them and enjoy them.

Just the title tells you so much. I started that column because I had really hurt some people with things that I wrote, about myself and about them. And so I wanted to figure out, ‘How do you do this’? How do you tell your story in a way that doesn’t blow up other people’s lives or make them so disappointed in you for revealing things about yourself that are very human, but not flattering [to] the people who love you?

I really meditated on that, and I had conversations about it, and I researched it. It took me a good 10 years to arrive at what felt like the right way to do this. And I feel like I do know the right way to do this now, which is mostly to blur people to the best of your ability. It doesn’t matter what color the ex-boyfriend’s hair is, or what job he had, or where he lived. What matters is the story. And also, the bigger part that matters is, ‘What was I doing there’? Looking at my own behavior, my own choices. Yeah, he was a jerk, why was I there? Why did I keep going back? What did I contribute to the situation? That’s the more important thing than whether that person is identifiable by readers.

You know what it is you want to hide from. I think a lot about something that [writer] Kiese Laymon asks students: “What is it you want to lie about?” And then he says, “Write that.” The pay dirt of memoir and essays. People are so concerned about whether they’re going to be a likable character if they tell the ugly truth. [But] that’s what makes you a likable character. It makes you someone that people can relate to. It means you’re just human.