A few weeks ago, I finished the first draft of a major writing project. It’s an initiative that’s taken me years to write, and it drew on my personal experiences working in museums.
And no, I’m not talking about the dissertation. Instead, I’m going to share my other long-term writing project: a memoir about my experiences at the Roswell Museum.
My Original Motivations for the Memoir
Way back in 2020, in one of my first posts of the year, I mentioned that one of the things I hoped to accomplish over the next twelve months was to write a memoir. More specifically, I wanted to focus on Roswell. At the time, I had three primary motivations. First, I wanted to highlight museum work beyond major institutions like the Met by sharing my experiences working at a smaller organization in a less urban setting. Second, I wanted to describe the different types of jobs that occur in museums beyond the public-facing work of curators, for the benefit of the general public and folks interested in museum work. I planned to do this through brief asides in between each chapter. In these 2-3 page descriptions, I’d talk about jobs like registrar, preparator, security officer, and other important but less public roles.
Third, and most importantly, I thought I had a worthwhile story to tell. The many encounters I had with artists and artworks over the five years I spent there resulted in a colorful variety of anecdotes. Together, these individual stories formed a larger mosaic detailing my maturation as a person and a museum professional.
That was the rationale, at least.
The Initial Memoir Drafting Process
I started thinking about writing a memoir as early as 2018, after I left Roswell. Classes proved to be time-consuming enough though, so I decided to wait until 2020, when I was finished with coursework and free to set my own schedule. Within a few weeks, I’d set a routine where I’d write first thing in the morning, about 30-40 minutes, five days a week. I took a stream-of-consciousness approach, focusing on getting everything done without worrying about elegance or style. That would come later with revision.
And things went surprisingly quickly. Within three months of starting my daily writing habit, I’d typed out over 80 single-spaced pages. Even better, I was only three chapters from finishing. I still had to write a few more job descriptions after that, but I could see the end of the first draft. Everything was going great.
Until it wasn’t.
Pandemic Interruption
When I wrote my list of ambitions for 2020, living through a global pandemic was not one of them. But that’s exactly what happened. In early March, the William & Mary campus shut down. I’d spend most of the next two years at home.
You might think being stuck in the house would be great for finishing writing projects. But a miasma of dread blanketed everything that year. I pushed my way through comprehensive exams, but a lot of my other interests and side projects initially withered.
Among those casualties was the memoir. In the wake of temporary closures, the endangerment of vulnerable frontline workers, and institutional financial precarity, it felt frivolous to pen amusing stories about my experiences with museums. This attitude further cemented itself with the murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning that took place in museums for the rest of 2020. It was not a good time to be sharing my stories, if ever. After all, I wondered, did we really need another memoir from a white woman? I didn’t think so.
So although I was close to finishing a draft, I would not look at the memoir for the rest of the year. And it would be years before I’d finally decide to finish it.
False Starts
That said, I did try finishing the memoir once or twice after 2020. I had no intention of sharing it. Rather, I wanted the personal satisfaction of finishing it. After all, I was so close, it felt like a shame to just set that project aside, even if I was the only one who’d ever see it.
Each time I tried resuming it though, I couldn’t get back into the groove. I got three pages into one of the remaining chapters before I set it aside again. I don’t remember exactly when this happened, but I think it was around 2022. By that point, the dissertation was well underway, along with a few other publications based on my research. There was no time for thinking about unfinished memoirs.
Until, in 2024, there was.
Resuming the Memoir Process
So what changed between 2020 and 2024? On a personal level, the biggest difference was that I was no longer working on a dissertation. That certainly freed up some mental bandwidth for thinking about the memoir again.
But what about society at large? You know who was no longer in office, sure, but the critical issues affecting museums in 2020 are still with us. The aftereffects of the pandemic will reverberate across museums (and every other aspect of society) for decades. And questions of equity and inclusion remain ongoing issues for museums (and again, every other aspect of society).
But I realized that if I waited for the right time to resume writing, I’d never finish it. Museums have arguably been in crisis since their establishment as institutions. Now was as good (or bad) a time as any to resume working on it. And the sooner, the better, as I knew my memories of Roswell would continue to consolidate and change the more time passed.
So shortly after moving to Norfolk, I resumed my early morning writing habit. And in less than a month, I had finished the draft.
Next Steps
So now that I’ve finished the draft, what’s next? Well, a lot, because getting a draft down is only the first step. It’ll need to go through a lot of revision before it becomes readable.
While I haven’t decided what that revision will look like, I have concluded that what I’ve written will be fictionalized (and, if ever published, marketed as fiction). I wrote in a nonfiction, first-person format to get my memories down quickly and efficiently, but that doesn’t mean I want to share those exact memories with the public. Ethically, I don’t feel comfortable talking about actual people and places I’ve interacted with, given that memories, even the most positive ones, can be messy. Fictionalizing my recollections also has narrative advantages. Because I’d no longer be bound to the factual lives of actual people, I can cut mundane details or expand more interesting episodes to craft a more compelling overall narrative.
Who knows how long it would take to finish these revisions. After all, it took several years just to put thoughts to (virtual) paper. But after years of project inertia, it’s nice to be working on this long-neglected undertaking again.
I for one can’t wait to read it!