As you can see from my
last post, I have never kept a blog before. Apologies for the very formal tone,
I am glad to see from other posts that I can now write more or less from
thought process so here goes:
I was interested to discover from The Autobiographer's Handbook edited by Jennifer Traig, about the attitude of different non-fictional writers during the writing process and what they have learnt from past publications of their work. Caroline Kraus says that: Keeping to the truth is my chief policy, though that is not reason enough to write about someone. I think it’s a case-by-case decision, but in my view, knowingly hurting someone in print, even with the truth, had better serve an unimpeachable purpose. [...] it may happen that feelings are hurt in spite of honest and honourable intentions. So it’s something to weigh carefully in every instance.
Steve Almond on the other hand emphasizes how when writing about one's family you sometimes have to deal with the consequences of revealing the truth.
...you have to be able to go home again, so if there are relatives whose feelings you would hurt by writing about them, then you have to weigh that-not hurting them-against your desire to tell that particular set of truths to the world.
The requirements for writing non-fiction seem pretty clear, you write the truth or you don't. Yet sometimes hiding the truth can be just as hurtful as exaggerating or lying about it. There is often a fear that we are making our fiction seem unrealistic without an element of the truth or our non-fiction seem less dramatic without an element of fiction, and the freedom doesn't end here, we just have to be respectful of our subjects and be aware of what we reveal to our readers as "the truth" as it is never purely fact or fiction.
I was interested to discover from The Autobiographer's Handbook edited by Jennifer Traig, about the attitude of different non-fictional writers during the writing process and what they have learnt from past publications of their work. Caroline Kraus says that: Keeping to the truth is my chief policy, though that is not reason enough to write about someone. I think it’s a case-by-case decision, but in my view, knowingly hurting someone in print, even with the truth, had better serve an unimpeachable purpose. [...] it may happen that feelings are hurt in spite of honest and honourable intentions. So it’s something to weigh carefully in every instance.
Steve Almond on the other hand emphasizes how when writing about one's family you sometimes have to deal with the consequences of revealing the truth.
...you have to be able to go home again, so if there are relatives whose feelings you would hurt by writing about them, then you have to weigh that-not hurting them-against your desire to tell that particular set of truths to the world.
The requirements for writing non-fiction seem pretty clear, you write the truth or you don't. Yet sometimes hiding the truth can be just as hurtful as exaggerating or lying about it. There is often a fear that we are making our fiction seem unrealistic without an element of the truth or our non-fiction seem less dramatic without an element of fiction, and the freedom doesn't end here, we just have to be respectful of our subjects and be aware of what we reveal to our readers as "the truth" as it is never purely fact or fiction.
I agree with you about worrying that your writing may sound unrealistic. I have had experiences, both good and bad that make me wonder whether people will question my honesty. In the end, I just write, and people will make of it what they will!
ReplyDeleteThe handbook you mentioned sounds very interesting.
I think there is always going to be times when you have to step away from the complete honest-truth even with non-fiction...mainly to fill in the gaps. But there is definitely a fine line to portraying raw truths without being criticised for it so I agree that you have to be aware of the balance.
ReplyDelete