A story I don’t want to tell anymore

A multi-use prompt

“A story I don't want to tell anymore” is a writing prompt I give in workshops sometimes. Generally, prompts are intended to help the writer connect with whatever wants to come through. Admittedly, though, this one carries a light agenda: to bring up the stale, old, disempowering narratives we have about ourselves and let them dissolve in the light of day. To exorcise a past that’s perhaps been affecting our lives in ways it doesn’t need to be. 

For instance, something that’s come up for me in response to this prompt is an old story of ineptitude. How, for much of my young life, I believed (knew!) myself to be clumsy, scatterbrained, flaky. Others caught on to this and reinforced it, teasing me about it in a way that amused them, united them, kept the peace. So I went with it, laughed along, leaned into the role. 

The first time I wrote this prompt, this old story rose like smoke from the depths of me. When the piece was finished and the smoke cleared, I looked around and saw piles of evidence to the contrary: a life I’d managed to build and maintain with some semblance of balance, even grace. The story of ineptitude simply was not true. It may never have been.

One ten-minute write has the power to disabuse us of such things. Getting this stuff onto the page changes its elemental nature, evaporates it from our souls, and leaves us lighter. I invite you to try it.

And! I’ve just found an entirely different, more literal way to use the prompt that’s helped unstick my memoir writing process. 

Slowed momentum

A rule of thumb for writing anything long-form is, as my teacher says, to “crazy glue your butt to the chair.” Commit to staying at the page long enough for something to come through—not something good, just something. I’ve found that when I can attain that magical adhesive, it’s not long before I gain some momentum and the paragraphs start piling up. 

Lately, though, the stickiness has been eluding me. Not surprising: I’m attempting to tell the story of my life—specifically the part of it that has moved in something of a redemptive arc. 

Here’s the thing about redemptive arcs though: the actual redemption usually doesn’t come til the very end. Most of the arc is made up of the junk that ultimately is redeemed: the pain, the shame, the cringiness. It’s the stuff we very smart adults keep in very organized boxes under the stairs of our souls. Hauling this crap out, box by box, choking on dust, reopening thousands of old files one by one is a chore that any very smart adult would rightly avoid. I find lots else to do instead. 

Almost too obvious

In terms of the story I’m trying to write (growing up as an adopted person), I am living in the redemptive days (meeting birth family). This is why I want to tell it: I’m seeing that it is indeed a story. Remarkable things have happened over the last couple of years. I tell people snippets of it; give them the headlines. But headlines lack detail, and there are questions, and so I find that I am telling the same very long story (having to do with the circumstances of my conception) over and over and over again. 

It came together when I was chatting with a friend who’s read some of what I’ve written so far. She too asked about this particular contextual piece. I heard myself saying, “You know, I should really write this. It’s a long story and I’m tired of telling it.” 

It’s—oh hay!—It’s a story I don’t want to tell anymore. Literally. Not because it’s painful or boring or untrue or messing me up, but because it’s a pain in the ass to keep repeating. 

This story would have ended up in the memoir anyway, but I’d been holding it aside for later. It felt too easy somehow. Too obvious. I suppose I thought of it as the connective tissue I’d fill in after the massive, heart-bursting truth bombs, the dusty boxes in the basement, that I expected would compose the bulk of the thing. 

But facing the bombs has been what’s keeping me stuck. Meanwhile this part of story—the thing people ask about, want to hear—has been staring me in the face for months. Not that I’m writing the book for other people; still, they’re pointing to the piece that is the readiest to tell. 

Keeping the reader engaged

Plus, these anecdotes—the ones that feel obvious and easy to tell—are the pieces that move the story along. Otherwise it’s bomb after bomb. Even the most compassionate reader can’t be asked to sit through a heavy download of complex memories. It’s not the reader’s job to sit in the basement with me going through boxes. It’s my job to select the pieces that make up the story, bring them upstairs, lay them out, show you them over tea. 

Following the flow of the story will lead me naturally, I think, to the bigger stuff. This feels obvious now, but I was so blinded by the scary work of facing major memories that I didn’t see this possibility. Now that I have, the word count ticker has already started creeping back up. 

A way in

Is there a story you’ve been struggling to tell because it’s too overwhelming, complex, sad, frightening, triggering? What part of it can you tell, right now, even to yourself? What question do you get over and over? What is easy to talk about? Not emotionally easy, maybe, but easy simply because it’s in the front of your mind, on the tip of your tongue? That might be the piece that’s the way in to the rest of it. 

What’s a story you don’t want to tell anymore? Get it parked on the page, and see if that doesn’t make more room to tell the rest.