July 24, 2006
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At the writing conference, you learn things you never expect to hear. In our general lectures we heard a marvelous speaker, Robin Hemley, who built upon the scandal of the James Frey fake memoir and discussed the history of such works. People have always claimed to have knowledge and experiences they never could have achieved.
Mr Hemly's point was that writers are people who always combine memory and imagination to create short stories and novels and that successful writers will learn to tell their stories as better and more genuine liars.
Telling True Lies
On the first morning of the writing
conference in Iowa you meet the
fiction writers, the screenwriters, poets
and the therapists come to make
their characters more authentic,
to resolve their characterly issues.
You learn that mining the soil
of real life is tricky, that just
because it "really happened", well,
that doesn't make it real. So to tell
the good story you have to decide
what to leave out, where to add,
and who will get to speak the
juiciest lines you wish you'd said.
You read the rough draft in class and
ask, "can you believe it? Have you ever
heard of such a thing?" When they answer,
"I thought this character had a truly honest
voice ..." you know you failed.
But when they stop you in the line
at the noodle shop where you all
go for lunch and say, "I'm rooting
for you! After you read your story this
morning, I'm so glad you got a divorce,
I'm so glad you moved across the world,
I loved when you ... and then when you
told that villian off ..."
You know you have something
Garrison Keillor will read on the radio
and everyone will know your lies
for the truth that lies beneath.
Comments (5)
I like the line, therapist who are there to become more authentic. Does that mean so they can learn to lie more adeptly?
The words you write always resonate with the truth.
thanks for sharing this. I've been following your summer writer's workshop experiences and thinking about what you've shared as I continue to work on my novel... I am simultaneously completing some "creative nonfiction" essays, and so I am also thinking about storytelling in general and the crossing (and blurring) of the boundaries between fiction and "reality."
On C-Span an author was saying about the same thing about truth and lies in relation to Frey's works. I could never be a writer.
Sounds good, but I'm not the one with the words to say how good it sounds.
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