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Words to the Wise
Taking the Risk—Writing
About Those We Know
I once heard it said
that if you are not willing to take the risk of writing about
those closest to you, you will never succeed as a writer. Now,
that may be a little overstated, but it points to a dilemma many
of us face: Some of the best material in our heads, for both
fiction and nonfiction, involves family, friends, enemies, and
acquaintances. Yet we shy away—nay, cringe—from exploiting these
riches for fear of offending someone or courting criticism.
Author Jane
Christmas has overcome any fear she might have felt. In her book
Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker, and Our
Grand Tour of Italy, Christmas recounts in unflinching
detail her five-week car trip in Italy with her mother. It was
not pretty, and if reviews on Amazon are any indication, not
every reader took kindly to her honesty. But the book has been a
hit—and I understand why: it's deeply real, and many of us can
relate.
Anne Lamott
would certainly approve. In Bird by Bird: Some Instructions
on Writing and Life, Lamott exhorts writers to write from
their memories. "Use these memories," she says. "They are
yours." She is mindful, of course, of defamation, but it's not a
problem. For fiction, her answer is to change everything that
might point to a person specifically. "Leave out his
kleptomaniac leanings. Leave out the kind of car he really drove
and the fact that he hated smokers so much that he planted a
tiny tree in the ashtray." Using your memories is about becoming
conscious, about writing from a place of insight and simplicity
and real caring about the truth. "If something inside you is
real," Lamott says, "we will probably find it interesting, and
it will probably be universal.... Risk being unliked. Tell the
truth as you understand it. If you're a writer, you have a moral
obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is
always subversive."
Reference:
Anne Lamott,
Bird by Bird:
Some Instructions on Writing and Life.
New York: Anchor Books, 1995
Words to the Wise on creative
nonfiction:
Creative Nonfiction? Isn't That an Oxymoron?
Creative Nonfiction: A Tricky Business
Creative Nonfiction Revisited
Taking the Risk—Writing About Those We Know
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