Saturday, April 4, 2015

Discovery, Despair, Dead, Done.


“Good morning,” my husband said.
“Creative Nonfiction has to be true,” I replied.
He put down his reader and looked at me in that patient-I’m-gonna-point-out-the-painfully-obvious way he has and he said, “That’s why they call it nonfiction.”
Epiphanies before coffee are not pleasant.
Let me explain. My daughter Grace, who is a talented writer, is taking a creative writing course at a local college. She writes “literary.” She’s good at it. She wants to be awarded a Pulitzer one day. And to be honest, there’s a good chance she will be.
Ah, to be “honest.” There’s the rub.
I’ve been telling stories my whole life. Some of them, I’ve been telling so long I think they’re true.
I have only ever considered writing nonfiction during moments of greed. Nonfiction sells better. Or during the rare psychotic break, when delusions of grandeur tell me I can write the definitive biography of Dr. Angie Debo.
Grace believes I can write anything she wants me to and right now she is studying creative nonfiction and is enthralled with it. She’s grown up with my stories and loves them. (She’s a good daughter.)
Last Friday I wrote a favorite story from my childhood. It was good. It was better than good, it was grand! It would be accepted on the first submission. Readers would await my next nonfiction story with bated breath. There would be a book, a collection of my recollections.
Then serious questions arose. Should I use real names? If I do, will I be accosted at the local Walmart by an angry relative? Or sued by an angry relative of someone in the story?
I ordered books. They came yesterday, only a week after I wrote the story. Lee Gutkind’s You Can't Make This Stuff Up has an index of words so I cut right to the chase, page 37. “If a person is identifiable . . . you are not shielded from litigation.” Even if you change the name.
Then comes a section he heads “Libel, Defamation, and Writing About the Dead.” I’m saved. I’m the only one in the story still alive.
But – there’s always a but isn’t there – he goes on to say “be honest, accurate, and ever so careful.” He uses words like “fact check” and “ethical” and “legal” and “moral.” He tells frightening stories about journalists and novelists, and biographers who were “caught.”
Okay. My dad’s still alive and he knew all these people in my creative nonfiction. So I asked him, “Do you remember So-and-so?”
He did.
“Was he the local Such-and-so?”
Daddy laughed. “No. He was the depot agent for the railroad.”
Discovery. Despair. That piece of creative nonfiction is Dead. And I’m Done.

But wait. It’s a good story. It’s just not true. I can Deal with that.

2 comments:

  1. Hello - and thanks for visiting Adventures of a retired librarian earlier. I came over to read your A to Z posts but got waylaid first by your dog story and then the piece inspired by Leaonard Nimoy. I think I'm maybe a few years younger than you, but I have the same sense of looking back in amazement at how far we've come in my lifetime (but still not far enough). I remember we had one indian (I.e. From India!) boy in our class at primary school and he had no friends. Girls and boys didn't mix and the dither boys, while never nasty or bullying, just didn't seem to bother with him. It breaks my heart looking back but I was a kid and that's just how it was. I hope these days the teachers would make more effort to integrate a lonely child.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you.
      I, too, hope teachers take the time to help those left out become part of their community. I had some teachers who did and some who did not. Unfortunately I think this is one of those things that do not change. But maybe, with all the attention bullying is getting, there will be more, not just teachers but students and parents and lunchroom staff who take the initiative.
      Goodness, I'm writing sentences like Henry James. Time to stop.
      Hope you're enjoying our day off. I am and I look forward to new posts tomorrow.

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