Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create

Who am I to tell my story? And how can we grant ourselves permission to write the stories we're compelled to tell when we've been told we shouldn't?

Without fail, almost every writer-new or experienced-has faced dire questions of permission and story ownership: there is something that they want to write about, that they need to write about. Yet: they can't. They have been warned not to. They might be paralyzed with shame, threatened with shunning, chastened into silence. Even if what they n...