The question I get asked most often about my third novel, This Is How It Always Is, is why it’s not a memoir. People wonder why I decided to make up a story about the parents of a transgender kid when in fact I am the parent of a transgender kid.
The short answer is one I am truly lucky to be able to give: it would have been a really short, really boring memoir.
My family and I are blessed to live in a progressive city where gifted, passionate teachers at our public elementary school champion social justice and diversity curriculums and where we find ourselves surrounded by an open, enlightened community. They have meant my kid’s gender transitions have been embraced and supported. You want your book to be dramatic, heartbreaking, devastating, shocking, and unpredictable. You want the opposite for your child. We have been very fortunate, so I can tell you why I didn’t write a memoir in one word: luck.
But have I ever limited myself to one word? I have not. Occupational hazard I suppose. So I will add that another reason I wrote fiction instead of memoir is that I didn’t want to tell my kid’s story. It’s not mine to tell. She may or may not ever want to tell it herself and will certainly have an entirely different story than mine besides. I was very keen to explore the stories and issues I do in this book while still protecting my child’s privacy, which means this story is about a transgender child, but it is not about my transgender child, and it is about a mother, but that mother is not me.
And never mind all that, I was primed for writing fiction by none other than the child in question. Parenting is great training for writing a novel. It’s true you have to do it with no time on no sleep while you’re worried and harried and sitting in the car waiting for ballet to get out, but parenting is like novel-writing boot camp. Parenting taught me, for instance, how to convince a tiny, distrustful human that baths are treats, salad is yummy, homework is fun, and shots at the doctor are cause for celebration (because, likely as not, they are followed by chocolate croissants), all of which is great practice for making made-up stories real and truthful. And even before all that, within days really of becoming a parent, I had learned that making a plan was a sure path to disappointment, that unforeseen change was a virtual guarantee, that I had no control whatsoever over really anything so failure to, at the least, pack an extra change of clothes was foolish. This too is good prep for novel-writing since novels, like children, go where they will with very little say so from you and no warning, and try though you may to corral them, they’re faster and slipperier and louder than you every time.
“But mostly maybe the reason I write fiction is this: my child is inspiring. Children are.”
Novels are stout and insistent. They are a labor of love. They take a really long time to come all the way to fruition. For years at a time, you are either writing your novel or thinking about your novel, worrying about your novel, feeling guilty when you’re not giving it your undivided attention. You can’t even believe how messy they are. Sound familiar? Like your kids, your novels demand time and strength and vision and faith. They demand confabulation and compromise, editing and revision, future telling and hindsight and endless trying again, and from the blank page you start with forward, they’re absolutely terrifying. But parenting has taught me to tackle the every-day new and limitlessly daunting by getting up every morning (usually way too early) with little more than hope that I can do it and a promise I will try my best, and this strategy has put me in pretty good stead for both momming and noveling.
But mostly maybe the reason I write fiction is this: my child is inspiring. Children are. Our legacy is their future because that’s how it works, and that’s how writing a novel works too. My kid is the best reason of all for me to make up hope-filled worlds for her to grow up in and grow up into. A memoir would have described her past. A novel, I hope, writes into existence for her a better future.
