Knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.
“I feel like you’re missing from the manuscript,” said Tammy. “I know who you are in relationship to your grief, but that’s it. I don’t really know anything else about you.”
I wanted to argue. The Requirement of Grief is a memoir about losing my sister to suicide. I’d bared my soul for 250 pages. How could my editor be telling me that I came across as some kind of Flat Stanley of grief?
But instead of arguing, a thought entered my mind: Damn it all to hell, she’s right! Even as the words came out of her mouth, part of me recognized their truth. Deep down, I knew I’d spent so much time and effort making sure my sister, along with my parents and my wife, were fully developed characters that I’d assumed my grieving self would be enough.
When I think back on that exchange, what’s of interest is the question of how did I know? Where did that deep knowing come from? Any writer who has workshopped a piece has been faced with the daunting task of figuring out which bits of editorial advice to take and which to leave. In graduate school, I’d sat through workshops where dueling ideas about how to improve something I’d written were delivered with gusto and certainty by my peers. Later, I experienced clashing advice in writing groups.
After a while, I figured out that sifting through critiques was like panning for gold. Mixed in with the sediment were nuggets, but I had to be able to tell the gold apart from the pyrite.
The way I learned to do that was by listening to my inner voice, the one that had yelled, Damn it all to hell, and by noticing when critical feedback struck a chord of knowing inside of me, the way Tammy’s had. No one could definitively tell me what to do with a piece of my writing. Ultimately, I had to decide, and I found the best results came when I followed advice that felt less like a surprise and more like a confirmation of a thing I already knew. Tammy’s critical feedback was an important aspect of making my book better, but following my own writing compass was equally important. As writers, sometimes we forget that last part.
After I got off the call with my editor, I felt defeated and deflated. I spent a few days in “woe is me” mode. Then, I got back to work revising what I’d thought was a finished manuscript.
I wrote whole chapters centered on me in my regular life, with grief on the periphery. I allowed my sense of humor to come through more clearly, because it’s a big part of my personality. I wrote about my experience going away to a writing residency, where a truly fearful version of me emerged.
I wrote scenes that took place at the cabinet shop where I work because this was the backdrop of my everyday life. I wrote about how I reacted with scorn and judgment when I found out that one of my best friends was having an affair — a reaction largely spurred by my grief and what felt like a physical inability to remain steady in my own life while bearing witness to a friend breaking up hers. In essence, I put more me in my memoir.
[Editor’s note: This piece is in support of the Inner Loop’s “Author’s Corner,” a monthly campaign that spotlights a DC-area writer and their recently published work from a small to medium-sized publisher. The Inner Loop connects talented local authors to lit lovers in the community through live readings, author interviews, featured book sales at Potter’s House, and through Eat.Drink.Read., a collaboration with restaurant partners Pie Shop, Shaw’s Tavern, and Reveler’s Hour to promote the author through special events and menu and takeout inserts.]
Danielle Ariano is a Baltimore-based writer and cabinetmaker. She is the author of the memoir The Requirement of Grief, a meditation on the complexities of the sister bond and the grief that comes when that bond is broken by a sibling’s suicide. Ariano’s work has been published in Salon, HuffPost, and Baltimore Fishbowl. She lives in Lutherville, MD, with her wife and son.
