Today we have a new author in the second installment of the series The Virtual Writing Scene: Everywhere and Nowhere. Jen Smith is the author of Sick, a memoir of addiction and recovery, blogging about truth and perception from a writer's point of view. Here she is, Jen Smith, with links down below to her blog and website.
Is Truth in Non-Fiction Really Just Perception?
What is truth?
Is truth a fact? I can look
at my car and say there are four tires.
That is a fact. I can look
at my car and say it’s red. That
is a fact. Or is it? Another person could look at my car and
say that it is burgundy. Is
burgundy red? Some would say yes
and some would say no. So then,
what is the true color of my car?
Truth really is a grey area. Recently I attended a writer’s workshop at Grub Street
Boston about breaking the rules in non-fiction and a great discussion formed
around this topic. At one point
the instructor gave us an example of an author that took the liberty to change
the number of heart attacks that happened during a particular time, in a particular
state, and also the name of a bar in a journalistic piece. The author’s reasoning was that the
number four sounded better than eight and Bucket of Blood, as a bar name, was
cooler than the actual name of the bar.
Interestingly there was a student in the class that was fine
with the number change but thought changing the name of the bar was outright
wrong. I felt the opposite. Changing the name of the bar was fine
to me but changing a statistical number was appalling to me. I found our contradicting views
fascinating. Neither one of us was
right nor wrong, we just had different perspectives based on our experiences
with the world.
As the author of a memoir, SICK, I write about the memories
of my past. I do this to the best
of my ability but in all honestly my memory is not the greatest especially when
it comes to the time frame of events.
Sometimes I’m not sure if an event happened before or after another
event so I have to make my best guess.
There is also the matter of perception. I’m well aware that I may perceive a past event very
differently than someone else that was there. Does that mean one of us is wrong and one of us is
right? The reality is that probably
both of us are wrong and perceive the past event based on our personal views
and experiences. That’s usually
how it works in my opinion.
So is what I’m writing not the truth? I don’t think so. It’s my truth, my perception of the
world as I understand it. We have
a genre called creative non-fiction.
This is when writers take true events and makes them more interesting by
adding detail and dialog that may not necessarily be true or accurate. I get this. Then there’s the controversy over Jeff Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces that he
originally claimed was a memoir but later came clean that the book contained
fictionalized events. If you look
at this from a business perspective, Frey couldn’t get representation when he
tried to sell the book as fiction.
Non-fiction is where it’s at now, it’s what sells. So Frey changed his tune and said his
book was a memoir and got on Oprah and sold millions of copies. I’m not saying what he did was right
but I definitely get it.
What do you think?
Is there such thing as truth? Is non-fiction merely one person’s
perception of the world? Is
creative non-fiction ok?
Jen Smith SICK Blog
SICK
on Amazon
Follow me on Face book
Twitter @JenSmithSick
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