Chelsea Boes: Snowed in with memoirists, and why writing a book is like having a baby

Some books have to be written all alone on your couch in the middle of the night so no one sees you fall apart while you write. And some you have to draft in a coffee shop in broad daylight so your material, mined from trauma, doesn’t kill you without witnesses present. In short, some books — though they wreck family secrets and break hard silences — just have to be born even though it hurts. A lot.

I went to listen to a talk by two authors freshly through this furnace of composition: Laura Carney of New York (the middle-of-the-night writer) and Melanie Brooks of New Hampshire (the coffee-shop-by-day writer). The two were set to discuss their new books, Carney's "My Father’s List" and Brooks’ "A Hard Silence," at the West Asheville Library last Friday night. Each book tells the true tale of the author’s beloved father and each explores a protected secret. (I won’t tell you the secrets — you’ll have to join me in reading the books.)

I footed through the snow at twilight to the library door, where a flyer splashed with Brooks’s face bore the words: Canceled due to weather.

Not to be deterred, the two set up in Malaprop’s book store the next day for a spontaneous signing. They waited behind two little round tables and chatted with me while wrens ate ice out of the cracks in the curb outside. A few customers tread in and out with their golden retrievers, poodles, big hats and scarves. Even the baby sycamore outside the window looked cold.

“I think my dad wouldn’t want me to live with a secret,” Carney said, thoughtfully sipping an almond milk cappuccino. Carney’s  book tells of her transforming journey through her late father’s bucket list. She said she looked to Brooks’s work for nourishment as she wrote, rewarding herself each time she finished writing a chapter of "My Father’s List" by reading one of Brooks’ chapters, “like running a mile then getting to go shopping.”

Both authors lost their dads too early, Carney to a distracted driver and Brooks to HIV during Canada’s “blood scandal” when contaminated blood was widely used for transfusions on unsuspecting patients.

The dad factor is part of what drew these writers together. And it was partly Carney’s connection to Asheville — she swam across the French Broad to fulfill one of her dad's bucket list items — that brought them to Malaprop’s on this 25-degree afternoon.

There’s a reason people compare writing books to having babies, and the parallel suits memoirists particularly well. Carney and Brooks both wrote with apparently competing desires: to tell the truth, but not to glory in the gore of exposure or to violate the memory of loved ones. These warring wishes are like the contractions of labor. And as with childbirth, no one can finish the job but you. Carney’s book took five years. Brooks’s took 10.

At first, Brooks thought she had to write the story to get it out and get rid of it. But in reality, she said, eyes sparkling with self-compassion, “the writing process helped me carry the story differently. The big exposure was me.”

After you have a baby, the work is of course not done. You have to raise it. Or in the case of a memoir, sell it. You have to sit behind a table and engage strangers with the most difficult story of your life. “I thought it would be hard to talk about my book to people,” Brooks explains, “but I feel more myself every time I have a conversation.”

It’s a blessing, Carney adds, to open space for other people to speak. “After they come over — they have a story every time.”

I think that after a person writes a book, she should get a baby shower, a bowl of punch, and a throng of curious people to count the fingers and toes of the miracle on the table. Weather foiled that hope on Saturday at Malaprop’s, as only a few people loitered by, not knowing what they were missing.

But check the Buncombe County Library event schedule as winter advances. These two will be returning for a do-over in the spring. Get to know them through their words so you can ask them the right questions when they reappear.

Meanwhile: Is there something you need to write down, a silence you need to break? I’m still thinking about what Carney told me behind that shiny little table: “Someone has to go first. You can go first.”

Chelsea Boes lives in Old Fort and works as editor of WORLDkids Magazine in Biltmore Village.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Chelsea Boes: Snowed in with memoirists, and the writing process