It's called creative nonfiction for a reason and we call it
creative nonfiction because we take the truth
and we treat it as a story and we use elements of storytelling to enhance that story.
But, there's a difference between enhancing and lying.
Your story is enough.
Your truth is enough no matter what that truth is and so stick to it.
It's also important to be honest because lies have consequences
and especially now the Internet is forever.
If you lie in your nonfiction,
people are going to find out and you will never be trusted ever again as a writer.
That said, you don't want to be so married to the truth that you make
yourself crazy trying to remember the color of the drapes in your childhood living room.
The color of the drapes isn't what matters,
what matters is what happened in that room.
The details are less important and the details,
that's where the creativity can come in.
So, you want to think about essence of truth and honesty in addition to,
of course, being factually honest.
Did something happen in 1994 or 1993?
That kind of detail does matter.
No man or woman is an island and so we generally have other people in
our lives and when we're writing from the
personal we are also writing about those people.
So, in addition to knowing what your boundaries are for yourself,
you need to know what your boundaries are in terms
of how you write about the people in your life.
What are you going to share and why and how is it
going to affect your relationships with those people?
If someone has wronged you and you know that you need to write about that,
you may not care what they think.
But, if you have difficult things to say about people
with whom you still have strong relationships,
you do want to consider what is going to happen to
your relationship with that person if you write about them in ways that are complicated,
and that's definitely something that I think about in all of
my nonfiction when I write about the people in my life,
and I try to protect them as much as possible.
I learned this from a great nonfiction writer Dinty Moore,
who said "Never be a hero or a victim
in your own work," and that is something that has stayed with me for years.
Which is to say that I have done wrong and I have been
wronged and the people in my life I've done wrong and been wronged by me,
and so I try to offer that nuance and balance as often as I can.
I found that so long as I'm fair in what I say about other people,
it works out really,
really well and the truth is I don't have anyone I could write about in
my life that I could betray because I wouldn't,
and I just don't have anything to unburden myself with.
Of course, that may not always be the case,
there are times when nonfiction writers write about people in their lives
and they are fair and those people still don't take it well,
and that's probably because they have guilty consciences,
and there's nothing you can do about that.
All you can control is what you put on the page.
Before I published my memoir, Hunger,
I did tell my family that I was writing a book about
fatness and my experience with them and I was very fair to them in the book.
But, I wanted them to know nonetheless,
I wrote about these things,
and you should know that before the book comes out.
But, you can still go to church and hangout with your friends,
no one's going to say anything about you.
Fact-checking is something that often happens
with publications that have the budget for it,
but before you ever get to that stage,
you want to find ways to fact-check
yourself and there are a lot of different ways you can go about it.
You can look at images from the past,
pictures that you may have to help jog your memory.
You can talk to the people in your life,
who are oftentimes going to be the best stewards
of the truth even though this is where the truth becomes
subjective because oftentimes two people in
a family are going to remember something very differently,
but I find that talking to people can be really useful.
If you're the kind of person that keeps a diary or a journal,
you can consult your own work.
I have gone back through old email sometimes to verify
facts and I've looked at my own blog sometimes to verify facts.
So, there are a lot of ways in which you can
interrogate yourself to make sure that you're being truthful.
I generally just trust myself and
my experiences and I don't remember
everything from my childhood in any way, shape, or form,
and in fact I don't remember a lot from my childhood,
but I remember what's most important,
and that's what I always hold on to when I'm trying to tell the truth.
Absolutely, I doubt my own memories and
that's something you're going to come up against when you're writing,
especially about your own past.
Time does tend to frame certain kinds of memories,
but I always trust that I know the core truth of whatever happened,
and some of the details can be fuzzy, but that's okay.
I give myself that forgiveness and I also know that most readers understand that, "No,
she probably doesn't remember word for word,
a conversation that happened when she was nine or 10 years old,
but she understands the gist of what was said."
So, you also have to trust the reader in those moments.
Sometimes you are going to remember things very differently from how someone else
remembers and experience and this oftentimes
happens when people are writing about trauma.
You have to trust your memory because oftentimes there's a reason
why you remember something differently from say someone who has hurt you in the past.
They probably see the world the way they want to
and you see the world the way you actually experienced it.
So, even though someone may have a different account,
it doesn't mean that they are inherently the authority on the experience.
In those instances, I try to use a few phrases of explanation and to ground my experience
in subjectivity and just identify that this is
my very subjective experience and that goes a long way with the reader.
One of the most important things to remember when you're writing nonfiction,
especially when you're writing about personal experiences is that
you're allowed to have and are incredibly encouraged to have boundaries.
You do not need to share everything of yourself.
You do not need to share every single intimate detail.
You simply need to know while
you're writing and even before you're writing what your boundaries are.
What are you comfortable sharing and what do you not comfortable sharing?
Know those boundaries firmly and most importantly stick to them.
You can write personally and hold things back for yourself. Everyone does it.
One of the most difficult things I see with younger writers and
newer writers is that they believe they have to share everything about themselves.
They have to cannibalize themselves to get attention to make a name for themselves.
Women and writers of color in particular are
oftentimes expected to write about trauma and
tragedy and to exploit their suffering to get attention and to get ahead,
and it's really unfair and you do not have to do that to make a name for yourself.
This is not to say that you can't or shouldn't write about trauma and tragedy.
If you look at my own body of work,
you'll see that I write about difficult things all of the time,
it's that you don't necessarily have to,
that is not the only thing that you have to offer the writing world.
So, if and when you do write about those things,
remember that no matter what you are in charge and
you get to choose what you say and why.