Why Lying is Hard

A common mantra for writers is, "Write what you know." The logic behind this advice is the simple fact that your story, your poem, your play, etc. will be more vivid, more engaging, more capable of producing that willing suspension of disbelief if it includes information and details that one could only know if one experienced that situation.

I've had this fact confirmed time and again, for as long as I've been writing creatively. I got the most positive feedback on work that derived from my own experience: poems based on childhood memories,  character portraits of family members, etc. It got me wondering: Why do I feel the need to be faithful to these details in my work? I was not bound to "facts" the way historians or biographers are. I've got the raw material--can't I do whatever I want with it?

I began taking risks with my own history. My characters were real people, usually family members or friends, but I made them do new things. I imagined my grandmother pregnant with my mother. I made my brother a paraplegic. (I'm so, so sorry, Tom).

Sure, some might think it's easy to write fiction, because you can throw whatever the hell you want on the page, and no one's going to fact-check it. But fiction comes from somewhere. Maybe it has a little grain of truth, maybe it has a lot. When I began building fiction (or "lies") around the truths of my life, it was just plain hard. Not because I was worried my loved ones would see themselves in it (although that's a legitimate concern as well) but because something about it felt so inherently wrong. Is it okay to create this character, who resembles my own brother in every way, and make him have a terrible accident? Even within the parameters of fiction, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was lying.

Maybe Tim O'Brien felt the same way while writing The Things They Carried, and other "war stories." These soldiers, their actions, their histories and belongings--some of those things probably existed. They've simply been reworked. Is O'Brien insulting the memory of a comrade if he changes his name, has him die by grenade instead of gunshot? Perhaps some would say "yes," but O'Brien clearly says no.

It takes an experienced writer to be able to feel comfortable risking your most personal memories and truths. O'Brien's story story seems so vivid because he knows what he's talking about. He's been there. He doesn't need to have seen the dead baby buffalo, he needs only to have felt those emotions that go along with any act of horror. It is with the emotions, and not with the facts or statistics, that truth lies. (Note pun).

It is my hope that I will eventually be able to take this attitude toward my own writing. When I write about ME ME ME! it only means something to me. If I can take a memory, a feeling, and moment, and make it universal, even if all the whos/whats/where/whens aren't exactly how I recall them, I will have created something larger than myself.