Writing a Memoir

Chantal The Fairy on Royal Enfield

When does a memoir stop being therapy with punctuation and start becoming something that might matter to someone else? Is it when you finally dare to re-read the first draft without flinching? Or when you realise you’ve been dissecting the most important text of your life — your own — with the delicacy of a chainsaw? The first draft has to be honest. Not “polite dinner conversation” honest. I mean raw. Unvarnished. A little feral. Because life is not neatly edited. Life is savage and tender and ridiculous in the same breath. If you soften it too soon, you lie. And if you lie, you lose the point. So you write it brutal. You write the things you were told never to say. You write the parts that make you look small, proud, selfish, frightened. You write the moments you wish you could delete. Then comes the real question — the one that arrives after the ink dries: Is this just for me… or could it steady someone else walking a similar road? Do I share it? Do I publish? Do I protect people with changed names and softened edges? Do I censor the parts no one talks about — the parts everyone lives? It’s a strange thing, holding your own history in your hands. It feels powerful. It feels dangerous. It feels a little like standing naked under fluorescent lighting and asking, “Is this too much?”