I Couldn’t Stop Updating My Memoir

Writing a memoir is a process of curation. But I kept wanting mine to reflect my up-to-the-moment present.

The breakup happened weeks before my first manuscript draft was due, which is obviously better than days before, but nonetheless worse than months. As I wrapped up my revisions, I’d randomly burst into tears without quite knowing whether I was crying over my ex or my book (though sometimes it was both simultaneously).

My then boyfriend (or is he my now ex? I’m still not quite sure how I want to refer to him in this context) and I were one of those couples that were practically married in all but the legal sense. He’d known from the start of our relationship that I wanted to be an author. When I got my first email from my now agent, it was in the cinema lobby after we’d watched The Farewell; speechless, I just shoved my phone in his face as soon as he returned from the bathroom. I can still recall the way his eyes grew saucer-like, along with the smile in his voice as he literally yelled, “Holy shit!” Weeks later, he remained patient and understanding when I spent the majority of our vacation in Marseilles—one we’d had planned for months—putting together a book synopsis and sample chapters because all my brain could think was, There is an email from an agent sitting in your inbox and if you don’t capitalize on this moment right now, this might never happen again. And when I apologized because I did feel guilty about working on our trip, he reminded me that this was my dream, that this was a big deal, that of course he could never get mad at me for chasing my ultimate goal.

When prospective romantic partners find out that I’m an essayist, they almost always jokingly ask if I’ll write about them in a future essay. It is, quite frankly, one of my biggest turnoffs. I probably won’t write about you, because you probably won’t be that important to me, especially if you think So is your next essay going to be about me? is funny and original.

My ex used to ask me the same question. Of course, with him, the answer was always yes. After all, how do you write a memoir without including the person who’s been your person since you were eighteen? I never let him read any of my drafts, but I did let him in on one small surprise early on: throughout the book, I refer to him as Toothpick. It was an inside joke that he absolutely loved. When I asked if he’d explain it to people who asked him about it, he said no. He would tell them that it was a secret for just the two of us—one made all the more romantic by being hidden in plain sight.

When I’d started drafting my book, and particularly once I’d picked out that perfect nickname for him, I never, ever thought it would also talk about us breaking up.

There is only one essay in my book that is “about” Toothpick (although, as you can imagine, he appears in almost every single one of them). At the time of our breakup, I was in the middle of giving the whole book a final once-over. I saved the essay about Toothpick for last, and, right before I sent the manuscript back to my editor, I debated what to do with the ending. In the end, I pressed enter twice to begin a new section and, before I could talk myself out of it, wrote, “Toothpick and I broke up forty-eight days short of our seven-year anniversary.”

I know I didn’t need to put it there. I didn’t need to “update” that essay to mention that we were no longer together. How would a random reader who didn’t know us in real life ever find out? It was just a few paragraphs, but it changed the whole ending and, consequently, the entire arc—of both that particular essay and the entire book.

As a self-confessed die-hard romantic, I always root for the love story. Frankly speaking, my new ending put a real fucking damper on things; in the span of one essay, I go from being stupidly in love to crying on my best friend’s couch.

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Memoir is never entirely honest. When I started writing my book, I was never under the impression that I would be completely truthful with my invisible reader, but I was surprised by how much I wanted to keep sharing with them. I’ve always imagined my book to be like a series of conversations with a friend, and every time something new happened in my life, I wanted to call up my friend (or in this case, open my manuscript document) and pick up where we’d left off.

Memoir is never entirely honest.

I always say that I first started writing my book during my sophomore year of college when, in a creative writing workshop, I wrote the very first draft of what is now my book’s opening essay, a personal and wider cultural history regarding Myanmar names. That was nine years ago. Since then, I’ve edited that essay multiple times, randomly returning to it when I read something related to it or think of something new to add. Yet, the first time I sat down with it once we’d finalized my book deal, it was jarring (and slightly amusing) to read paragraphs that had been written by teenage-me as I stepped into what writer Julie Metz calls “the memoir time machine.” The dilemma I faced was when I stepped back out of the time machine and returned to the present—I wanted to bring my readers back to the immediate present with me.

I now realize that it’s absurd to want the story on the page to reflect my real-life-literally-as-you’re-reading-this present, but, well, that’s basically what I was striving for. Maybe it’s a trap some new memoirists fall into—that inability to accept that you can only bring the reader up to a certain speed (or maybe it’s literally just me!). If I’m being entirely honest, though, I concede that part of it was also due to a not-so-small fear that a reader would dismiss my writing as “young” and “naive,” especially given my age. I’m well aware of the subsect of readers who scoff at twenty-somethings who publish “memoirs.” What do you even know about life, you sweet summer child? I imagined one of these readers tutting as they picked up my book. Which then led to me wanting to explain—as though three months would make a difference to somebody who had already written me off based solely on my year of birth—that I’m not the same guileless, wide-eyed kid I was when I relayed this particular story in the way that I did. I wanted to tell this cynical reader, Look! I’ve learned something new over the past few days/weeks/months!

I asked my editor what she thought about the new ending that referred to my breakup. She said it worked well as long as I was comfortable with it. I told her that I’d thought about it for a long time, and, in the end, it felt disingenuous of me to not include it. I’d feel like I was keeping a secret from the reader who (I hope!) was rooting for me and Toothpick throughout the essay. Memoir can never be entirely truthful, but I also didn’t want to knowingly lie, even if just by omission.

When you write about “real life,” when do you stop feeling compelled to update your memoir, especially if you are, as I am, still relatively young and life keeps throwing one curveball after another? The truth is, I don’t completely know.

If I were to guess when writers stop, though, I think the answer has two components. The first is about memoir reading: It makes you feel less alone. I feel the urge to keep a reader updated on a specific life event on the off chance that they’re going through a similar thing. I want to tell them everything I’ve found out in the hopes that maybe something that worked for me will work for them too. Maybe a reader will read my book and realize (as I had) all the ways in which their supposedly perfect love story had started fraying at the seams, and if that is the case, I want to tell them that they will be okay. If I can find the courage to fling myself back into the world of singledom (and after a year of dating apps, let me tell you, it takes a lot of courage) following the termination of a seven-year relationship, then they can too. And if even after that heartbreak of an ending I can hold on to a laughably unwavering belief in the redeeming power of romantic love, then I promise that you can too.

When do you stop updating your memoir, especially if you are still relatively young and life keeps throwing one curveball after another?

Toothpick and I are in touch again now. We weren’t for a long time, which was primarily my choice. While reviewing copy edits, I wanted to add that detail—to tell the reader that on the first day after our breakup, I cried for several hours when I realized that, for the first time in seven years, I didn’t know what he had for lunch that day because I had specifically told the person I’d talked to every day for seven years not to contact me. A few months later, I wondered if my publisher would be annoyed if, during my first gloss of the final pages, I added a short paragraph about how the first time we texted each other post-breakup was exactly as awkward as I’d imagined it would be. But I didn’t add either of those things—not only because I technically wasn’t allowed to at those stages, but because by then, I’d finally accepted that I can’t just keep adding events like my book is some sort of app that I need to regularly update. Life is tumultuous. Books are not. Books cannot keep up with life. That’s not their point.

Which leads me to the second component of my answer, which is related to memoir writing: It’s not about what happens. So I went through a devastating breakup. A good memoirist asks themselves, So what? What is the point here? So what if X happened? After all, why are you compelled to tell your reader that X happened but not that you switched breakfast cereals, even though both of those changes occurred? What did you learn from X? How did X make you a better or worse human being? If it did neither, then it’s probably not worth adding. Despite what a lot of people seem to think, writing a memoir isn’t simply a string of things that happened. It’s also a form of curation; at every step, you constantly ask yourself, What will including this detail do for my book? What will not including it do? Asking the aforementioned questions helps you decide what is crucial to relaying the truth (or at least, your version of it). I wrote about the Big Life-Changing Events (i.e. my breakup) but also about other details that might seem less big (see: a set of rice cooker instructions) but that were actually integral to the overall story—to my story.

I’m not sure whether to end on the anticlimactic truth that, despite all of the aforementioned advice, there is an easy, straightforward answer to the question of when you stop updating your memoir: when your publisher bans you from doing so. I know it’s super boring! I’m sorry! One day, I woke up to an email from my editor saying my book was off to copy edits—and just like that, I was barred from incorporating any more substantial updates. The version of my life that was filed last May is the most updated version that readers will get.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking about my book. I’ll read an article or watch a movie and wish I’d encountered it just a few months earlier because it would tie in so perfectly with a specific essay in my collection. But that will probably keep happening forever. I will always be thinking about my book, but that’s only because life will keep happening.

Maybe I can cheat a little bit and add my latest update to my memoir here: Toothpick still hasn’t read any version of my book, but now that it’s completely out of my hands, I’m actually excited for him to read this final, as-polished-as-possible version so that we can both enter that time machine and smile at those past versions of us and all the hijinks we got up to. I’m still using his Netflix account because I’m too lazy to log out and he’s too lazy to change his password. For some reason, we still have an ongoing group chat with his parents, but I don’t mind, because his dad will regularly text us photos of his parents’ dog. Other than that, nothing of note has happened. I’ll keep you updated if something does.