R. Renee Branca

(E. Dickinson #1263)

K is working on a memoir about a complicated and painful relationship she had with someone, recently deceased. She wants to paint a textured picture, but she wants to be honest as well. “And,” she said, “I want to be accurate. But there’s so much I don’t remember as I try to reconstruct this person. I don’t want people to think poorly of him, but he did some rotten things. How do I know my memories are the truth? And when I don’t remember, is it ever OK to just make something up?”

Everyone had a different response but similar sentiments. E felt the writer shouldn’t worry about the reader’s perception, quoting Anne Lamott: “Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” A agreed, pointing out how people can be inherently contradictory, but that this is what made them interesting, and made a reader invest enough in a character to engage with the narrative. Other members of the group thought the larger “truth” of a piece was more than a collection of “facts” about something that happened, told in chronological order.

I don’t believe that memoir, creative nonfiction, and narrative “based on a true story” are interchangeable, and what we should be trying to accomplish in each of those forms is distinct. However, I do think that in all three cases, your primary job is to serve the story rather than the people in it. You aren’t writing a trial transcript, or providing a witness statement. Your memoir isn’t therapy (though it may be therapeutic to write it). You aren’t even writing history. You are telling a story. Sometimes that means a chronology becomes asynchronous, or details are changed to support a better understanding of the larger concern. Memory is faulty–it’s designed that way. And while I absolutely don’t think you should “make shit up” and pass it off as “what really happened” (I’m looking at you, James Frey), I believe there’s space for speculation and that there are times when a writer has to tell the story as she experiences it, regardless of what can be “proven.”

A good rule of thumb: If it feels like a lie, don’t use it in nonfiction.