On Writing Memoir: The Literary, the Legal, and the Loophole

Conversations from the Archive
April 2015
BinderCon Los Angeles

Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience, Eileen Cronin
Excavation: A Memoir, Wendy Ortiz
Land of Enchantment, Leigh Stein
Quinn Heraty, Esq.

Excerpts:

Leigh Stein: So, we have two therapists and a lawyer.

How did you decide to write the book?

Eileen Cronin: I wrote a piece in The Washington Post. My mother took Thalidomide without testing. I wrote a letter to the editor about another piece they’d published on the subject that angered me. I was enraged. I felt completely diminished. I wrote my whole life in two thousand words in two weeks.

My memoir is a complex family story. I’m one of eleven. My mother is bipolar. I consider myself a feminist woman, and I had to write a hideous book about the women in my family. My brothers were the ones who were supportive.

Wendy Ortiz: I always knew it was going to be a book. I had written the story as fiction many times before. I wrote an essay to test the temperature out there.

A common question I get: “What did your mom say?” There’s an assumption about my relationship with my mother—that she’d read the book. My mother hasn’t read my book. I never had my mother in mind when I wrote this book. My father passed away before the book came out.

Cronin: My siblings haven’t read [Mermaid], but their friends are writing the Amazon reviews. My brother is extremely supportive.

You grow up in an ultraconservative place. You are different. It’s not a good place to be. Family may be the first to turn on you. You have to find the people who will get you out of it.

Quinn Heraty: Anyone can sue you for anything any time. I think you should write everything. That doesn’t mean you have to publish it.

There are two areas of concern: (1) disclosure and (2) defamation, [which are] false statements that caused injury.

Ortiz: I wrote a draft with [my teacher’s] real name because he wasn’t innocent, but right before publication, I thought, “Wow, I’m in a small press without a lawyer. I’m going to change his name. But not by very much.”

I thought, “What are my intentions here?” I will never know if that was the right choice.

Heraty: If it’s factually true, you don’t have to worry about liability for defamation. The more interesting, grayish area is disclosure: invasion of privacy.

[The definition of disclosure is if something is] not noteworthy, not of public interest. If it’s newsworthy, it’s an exception: reporter’s privilege.

Ortiz: I felt somewhat protected because [my former teacher] is a registered sex offender because of something else. I felt a weird safety.

Cronin: There was no escaping telling about my mother’s mental illness when telling my story. I waited twenty-five years to write it. I waited a long time for her to die, but she’s going to outlive me.

Artistically I wouldn’t have changed the names. I did what [the lawyers and editors] decided. I named one of my sisters Liz. She was furious.

Heraty: The dead don’t sue. Dead people have no rights or privacy. It’s open season. At some point, all of our lives are history.

There was a documentary that came before Monster. All material that became public came from the documentary. Aileen Wuornos’ lover wouldn’t sign a release, so they had to fictionalize some things. Christina Ricci looks nothing like her.

Ortiz: Originally I had a great agent who was having a hard time selling the book. [The feedback was] “it’s beautiful, but it’s so dark.”

Basically, dark is hard to market. I received positive rejections.

Stein: The glowing rejections make you want to jump out of the window.

Ortiz: I have a new agent who’s trying to sell Excavation to a bigger publisher. I sent my list of rejections to the new agent.

What’s really activating is not the story about the teacher/student relationship, but adolescent sexuality. It resonates with readers. That’s what shook people.

Cronin: Writers can’t not write. I started writing pieces in small literary reviews.

I sent an email at 4:00 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to Alice Walker’s agent [because I thought,] “This woman understands women who’ve not had an easy path.”

I received a response in two minutes. She read [the book] over the weekend and signed me on Monday.

In our family, women had babies. The book is about the quest for motherhood.

I published too many excerpts in small magazines, [according to O, The Oprah Magazine.] [They said,] “She’s published too many,” [and turned me down.]

You just have to keep moving on. Keep finding new venues. Trust the universe knows where it’s going.

Stein: Keep publishing. You might get an agent. If I had to do it again, I would write the whole book first. I sold it on a partial/proposal.

Humanize the bad guy. Readers are smart.

Ortiz: Just because a bunch of agents are vulturing around you, don’t just pick one. You need a compatible agent. I needed a two-and-a-half-year courtship before commitment to my current agent. Do your homework.

Cronin: You will not have control over your book if you don’t write the book. Write your book. At least write several drafts. You’ll still write it after it’s sold.

Heraty: Just write it. Defamation is state by state. Truth is generally an affirmative defense.

Ortiz: The original drafts didn’t have any contemporary chapters about where I am now. The ending just sort of appeared to me. I wanted to leave space for what was going to happen next.

Other writers give me permission.

Cronin: My whole life was about finding my identity. I had to end the book with finding my husband and having a child. It ends with my daughter as a ballerina on stage.