Should I write my memoir as a novel?

An interview with Teri Case, author of the life-inspired, award-winning novel Tiger Drive.

I am regularly contacted by potential memoirists who are wondering whether they should write their memoir as a novel. Sometimes they want to tell their story but not have it associated directly with them. Other times they want to write about people who prefer not to end up in a book. And some authors think it’s prudent to change certain details for legal reasons. They’re often right and I get them the best legal advice that I can. I have helped memoirists to change identifying details, but I haven’t helped a memoirist to write a novel because fiction is not my area of expertise. My thought has always been that if you’ve never written before then trying to write two genres at the same time is quite a challenge! Not impossible, but a challenge…

Then there are authors who want to be novelists but there is a true story inside them that is screaming for release! I think the lovely Teri falls into this category. I met her through a memoirist I am working with as she is a significant character in his story. I often speak to the friends and family of my authors – mining them for detail, fresh perspectives and stories my authors have forgotten. When I spoke to Teri, she told me that she’d written the life-inspired novel Tiger Drive. I read it and loved it and then I wanted to know what was true, what was fictionalized and what her process was. Teri kindly agreed to be interviewed by me and you can read our chat below. I hope you enjoy it and find it thought provoking. Please share this post and comment to let Teri and I know what you think. You can ask her, or me, any questions. And do please support Teri by buying Tiger Drive, leaving a review and signing up to her great newsletter via her website.

Enjoy! Warmest wishes, Marnie

Hi Teri, thanks for taking the time to chat to me. At what point in your life did you realize you wanted to write a book?

At a young age, I decided to be an artist. Actually, my dad told me I would be one. He had meant by drawing, but in my tiny heart, I knew I would be a writer. I was always writing stories in my head. On road trips, I’d stare out the window at the yellow and white highway lines. Long solid lines were Mr. and Mrs. Yellow, or Mr. or Mrs. White, and the dashes were their kids on their way to paint-bomb each other’s houses. The Whites and Yellows were always fighting. Once I started playing with Barbie Dolls, Ken and Barbie’s story was epic; it spanned three years and I consider it my first series. My first written project was in the third grade. I wrote about a Native American boy with a pear-shaped head who the kids bullied. It had a happy ending. Once hormones came into play, I started writing teen romances. Not surprisingly, the main character’s father was an alcoholic, but the story also had a happy ending. Hmm … I’m spotting a trend here.

A teen romance was my first industry submission. When I was sixteen years old, I handwrote it on college ruled paper, bound it with blue yarn and mailed it to Seventeen Magazine. I never heard back from them.

My writing space is not glamorous! It’s currently the kitchen table or a space at the library. But I think it’s a good message: sometimes we have to write anywhere we can.

Did you know immediately that you wanted to draw from personal experience?

When I sat down and wrote the first draft of Tiger Drive in 2011, I was more surprised than anyone about the personal subject. I was forty-one and thought I’d write an adult romance, but thanks to an online writing class, I wrote the first five hundred words of Tiger Drive instead. I was scared to death and felt like I’d opened pandora’s box, and yet, I couldn’t stop writing for four months until it was done.

What were the concerns that you had about that, if any?

My greatest concern about writing Tiger Drive from personal experience was for my family. My family has secrets I still don’t know about. I didn’t want to inadvertently tell someone’s truth or hurt anyone. Tiger Drive is fiction but has archetypes that exist in my family: an addict, an abused woman, an abusive man, a gang member … The thing about archetypal characters is that they are predictable; they behave in anticipated ways. While the plot of Tiger Drive is fiction (for example, my dad didn’t beat a man into a coma), I often stopped and wondered, Am I actually uncovering a truth about my family? Answer: Yes. Yes, I did uncover a few dark secrets by writing Tiger Drive.

What could be the positives for you as a person and as an author?

Tiger Drive has been a gift in countless ways. First, I couldn’t help but take an inventory of the people who helped me when I was the teenage character, Carrie’s age. The novel inspired me to pay this help forward by creating the Tiger Drive Scholarship which helps support students who are reaching, learning and growing beyond their familiar environment by attending college or trade school.

Secondly, the novel has been healing for my family. My mother, whom Janice is loosely inspired by, called me after she read it. She was emotional and said, “Reading Tiger Drive has made me realize I never took the time I needed to mourn your father. I was so busy surviving.” For the record, she recently read it for the fourth time.

And finally, the connections I’ve made with teachers, addicts, victims, and people who are struggling to feel like they matter has been priceless. I am humbled by their trust in me on a daily basis.

In the end, you wrote a novel – how did you make that decision, rather than writing a memoir?

There are two reasons I could never have written a memoir instead of writing a life-inspired novel. The primary reason is that members of my family have secrets to this day. I actually do not understand everything that has happened in my family and couldn’t have written a memoir. My father passed away when I was fifteen, and he took stories to the grave with him. After researching abuse and writing Tiger Drive, I believe my father was sexually assaulted as a young boy, but I’ll never know for sure. Secondly, the truths I do know about my family that impacted my world view and perspective do not belong to me. Things happened that would require me telling someone else’s truth and experience, and I respect and love them too much to share their stories before they do. A counselor once advised me that a dysfunctional home is like a swimming pool. If someone pees in the pool, everyone gets pissed on, but some worse than others. It seems I was often on the opposite side of the pool.

Book cover designed by Olya Vynnychenko https://99designs.com/profiles/amber85

Was this your first book and if so, what was your process?

Tiger Drive is my debut novel. I had six months off from work, and I took the time seriously because I had been working since I was fifteen years old. I set an alarm each morning as if I was going to work and then I sat at my desk with a timer. I’d set the timer for twenty-minutes and keep my butt in the chair until I wrote something. I reset the timer again and again. At this point, I didn’t have any training about how to write a novel. Thanks to the creative writing course, I had the first five hundred words and I also knew how I wanted the book to end. For four months, I showed up every morning and filled in the blanks. At the end of each day, I sent my new words to my younger brother, Karsen. He would let me know if I was pushing too many buttons or not. I then rewrote it fourteen times over the next six years.

Don’t panic! I can explain the six years and rewrites. Once I returned to work full-time, I wasn’t able to focus energy on moving Tiger Drive forward. And when I say “rewrote it fourteen times,” I mean I received feedback from at least fourteen people: editors, beta readers, agents … Whenever I received similar feedback, I addressed the issue by rewriting specific scenes. Once done, I started sending query letters to agents again—I was getting closer, but I still wasn’t convincing them they must sign Tiger Drive. Finally, I took a course via Author Accelerator called Story Genius (inspired by a book written by Lisa Cron) to help me start my second novel In the Doghouse (don’t get stuck writing only one book!). During Story Genius, I realized why agents had said they didn’t care about the characters’ journeys. Story Genius by Lisa Cron focuses on the character’s arc and the story’s internal logic and urgency. By better explaining my characters’ misbeliefs and what they wanted, I was finally able to fix Tiger Drive and share it with the world.

Here is a picture of the room I reserve for 3 hours at a time at my local library. I often write at the library. It’s quiet, free, and I’m surrounded by thousands of books!

How did you decide what to fictionalize and what to write about exactly as it happened?

I was inspired to write Tiger Drive after a creative writing teacher told us to look around our writing room and find something that inspired us. I was inspired by two photos. One was of my mom’s high school graduation and the other was of my father in the merchant marines. They were about eighteen years old and their eyes still sparkled with hope and optimism for their futures. I wondered, What happened to these two people that they became such train wrecks together? I made up a story.

The plot is fiction. My dad never beat anyone into a coma. My mom doesn’t sing and never dreamt of leaving her children behind. My drug dealing brother wasn’t part of a gang, but he made choices and acted like he belonged to one. I never understood these three people, so I created a plot and asked myself, What did they each believe about life that would motivate them to make their choices.? How would it feel to be an alcoholic? What does “rock bottom” feel like? How did it feel to be a mother of several children in an abused relationship? Why don’t abused women leave? Why would a young man join a gang?

To explore these characters I relied on my life as a teenager in a dysfunctional family. Carrie is me and her thoughts, fears, struggles, and dreams were mine. And I most definitely pulled from the death of my dad. My father was an alcoholic and committed suicide when I was fifteen. He didn’t leave a letter so I wanted to know what Tiger Drive’s Harry would write as his final goodbye. As I mention earlier, I never wanted to tell anyone’s truths with my novel, but my story and my father’s, since he is no longer alive, seemed fair to share.

Also, I took advantage of the opportunity and designed characters around those who really encouraged me and supported me in my teens. For example, I worked at the Department of Personnel for the State of Nevada in high school. In the novel, I say it’s the county department, but I wanted to thank those amazing people for being a positive influence in my life. I heard from four of them who read the book. Amazing, right?

Emotionally, how was the writing process?

Writing Tiger Drive and my second novel, In the Doghouse: A Couple’s Breakup from Their Dog’s Point of View, has been a cathartic release. Not only is it immensely rewarding to have made the dream I always said I would accomplish “someday” a dream accomplished today, but I’ve had to question my own misbeliefs about life and people. I’ve found great forgiveness for myself and others while writing. Now, I can’t stop.

What was your family’s response to you writing this book? Did that influence you at all?

Tiger Drive is the name of the street I grew up on. When my family first heard I was writing Tiger Drive, they assumed it would be a memoir. My mom was the most concerned. Like daughter, Carrie and mother, Janice in Tiger Drive, my mom and I did not get along when I was a teenager. I was closer to my father (also similar to the book). My mother hadn’t even read a word of the draft when she started telling people (everyone except me, of course) that, “Teri is going to make me look weak and her dad strong.” For anyone who has read Tiger Drive, including my mom, that wasn’t the case. My mom loves the book. She recently read it for the fourth time, and she tells everyone she knows to read it.

But a funny side story is that my second novel is titled In the Doghouse. The bar that my family frequented when I was a child, and it had the first phone number I learned to memorize, was called Doghouse Bar. When my family found out I was writing In the Doghouse, they were convinced that NOW I was writing a memoir and they were all done for. But no, their secrets are still safe.

How did you feel when you’d written the book and released it into the wild?

When I first released Tiger Drive, I was both elated to have finally done what I’ve always said I wanted to do and scared to death how it would be received. Would people assume I was telling a true story? I worried that people would think my dad had beaten a man into a coma, or that I had “outed” my older brother. I waited for someone to say the book was horrible, too vulgar, or poorly written. But none of that happened. Since its release, I’ve received dozens of emails and private messages from people who related to one or more of the characters. People who supported me when I needed support the most as a teen came out again and lifted me up. I’ve cried more tears than I can say. And as of today, Tiger Drive has won several awards. Not too shabby, right?

And, regarding your privacy, how protected or exposed did you feel and were your feelings a surprise to you?

Should I write my memoir as a novel?

Share this post:

Dear Marnie

Follow me

Work with me

Get Your Free Memoir Writing Starter Guide here!