I read Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, when it first came out last spring. Right away, I knew it was the perfect fit for my Book Club for Writers.
Something that comes up in almost every writing workshop I teach1 is the question of how we write about real people in our lives. Over and over, writers ask, “Do I have to wait until my mom/ex-husband/next-door neighboor/hairdresser is dead before I write about them?”
If you asked Maggie Smith this question, I’d be willing to guess that she’d offer an emphatic “no.”
Smith’s memoir is about her divorce and the aftermath of it. If I had to summarize the situation in a sentence, here’s what I’d tell you: Smith wrote a poem, the poem went viral in a Meryl-Streep-reading-it-in-front-of-an-audience kind of way, and because poets never expect their work to go viral, the experience kind of picked up Smith’s life and shook it around.
In Smith’s own words, the memoir is not a “tell-all.” In fact, she argues that no memoir ever could be.
“There’s no such thing as a tell-all, only a tell-some—a tell-most, maybe. This is a tell-mine, and the mine keeps changing, because I keep changing. The mine is slippery like that.”
—Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Here’s a segment of an interview Smith did with NPR’s Weekend Edition last year, emphasis mine:
NPR: Have you heard from your ex-husband about the book, or did you talk to him before it published?
MAGGIE SMITH: No.
NPR: And you haven't heard since?
MAGGIE SMITH: No.
NPR: Do you - does it matter, I guess, how he feels about any of this? I'm asking genuinely. I don't know the answer.
MAGGIE SMITH: I don't know that there is an answer. I think I just got to a point in my life where I decided not to make decisions for myself based on anxiety and fear. And all I can do is sort of approach the project with honesty and integrity and do my best to keep it centered on my own experience. And I've done my best at that.
That’s what I try to tell writers when they start worrying about who will read the work before they’ve even sat down and written it. Approach the project, and act on your own behalf.
The act of writing, all on its own, could change you. It’s certainly changed me. It’s the reason why I think we all should be writing if we want to be. Writing changes us, which helps us change the world.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION 📖
I’d love to have you at the Book Club for Writers discussion of Maggie Smith’s memoir. During our discussion, we’ll discuss the question of how to write about the real people in our lives.
WHEN? Thursday, April 25, 8-9:30 PM EST. WHERE? Live on Zoom.
There are a couple ways to join our book discussion.
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OPTION 2: Become an annual subscriber for $50. You’ll also get 10% off writing workshops and access to occasional co-writing sessions.
Paid newsletter subscribers will receive the book club Zoom link the day before the meeting.
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Happy reading and writing!
💛 Hurley
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