A conversation with the author of The Maps They Gave Us.

Wayne Scott refers to himself in the third person when discussing his memoir. I asked if that was a tool. 

“Absolutely,” Wayne said. “Some of my most miserable experiences in writers’ critique groups have been when people were writing memoir, and as you’re having the conversation in the group they’re saying, ‘I did this, I did that.’ They’re talking about the story and continuing it in the first-person narrative, and then it really just becomes group therapy because people want to rush and comfort the ‘I’ that’s sitting in front of them.”

Wayne and I also discussed when to take creative liberties and change inconsequential details, how to build suspense in scenes, how writing in first-person present tense kept him more vulnerable because it created guard rails around the narrative and did not allow him the foresight or knowledge of the writer at the desk, and how he thinks about writing memoir and its impact on our kids.

I asked his advice on how to move through the publishing process for my own book.

“Write an honest book that’s beautiful,” he said. “And don’t think about the market. Then see where you can make it go.”

References:

Wayne’s Modern Love essay

Huffington Post essays about his son:

Why We Let Our Teenage Son Treat His Mental Health Issues With Marijuana

My Son Is Skipping Thanksgiving This Year, But Not For The Reasons You Might Expect