In this adventure of telling my story I start with all the advantages: nobody knows the material better than me. Others will have some data, a point of view, some memories, some anecdotes, but the heart of the story is mine. Only I know what it feels like to be inside of me. I know how I see the world. And the most important thing: it is my interpretation of the data of my existence, it is the way in which I have organized my memories, it is what was learned from the anecdotes lived that my reader is interested in knowing. It is my particular and unique way of telling, of choosing words, of describing environments, of painting landscapes, of profiling people and analyzing behaviors that will produce exciting, vital narratives capable of influencing other lives. And, most importantly, my reader will want to know what I felt in each experience and what I decided to share. You’ll also want to guess what I decided to keep quiet: the air of mystery that every good personal story contains.
Inevitably, the correctors of my autobiographical stories will appear: that this was not the case, that this information is incorrect, that the dress was a different color and that the guy was not called that. The good news is that, with the right to recount one’s life, comes the privilege of recounting it as one pleases, of having a whimsical memory and a good supply of fibs to fill in the information gaps. If you have to twist and mend here and there, you do it for a greater good: the story is entertaining, interesting, intense, sad, funny, exciting, unpredictable, etc. because one must not forget that one writes to be read. And that leads us to a parallel theme: the private diary, the classic space where one pours out their stories and that reflects a need to write and an intention not to share. That’s what we’ll deal with in our next meeting in this fortnightly column.
