No, But Maybe Yes

  

I was once invited to a big university to talk about writing memoir. A young professor said he had led an uneventful uninteresting life and asked if it was okay to make things up to appear more interesting to a reader. Would that be all right? I said no, but if he wanted to write about the things he wished he’d done, a reader would discover who he was by the kinds of things he wished he’d done or been, as long as he admitted that these were dreams, not reality. You can probably write a memoir alternating chapters of what you wish you’d done, with what you actually did. Of who you wish you were instead of who you’ve become. And that’s interesting.

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