Fact vs Fiction

Fact vs Fiction

There is a long standing tradition of storytelling in my family. No one has been published authors but passing on legends, myths, fairy tales of cultural significance has been important. And, even more importantly, I wanted to know! People did not always offer family stories. I asked for them. And asked for them to be told over and over again. I asked invasive questions that made people uncomfortable. I asked that annoyingly simple yet exasperatingly complicated question: why? Sometimes people were forthcoming. Sometimes they were not. As people aged they became more willing to divulge the secrets I wanted to know. But also did not always have the strength or clear memory to do so accurately. I came to recognize that the truth that we want to know about our past does not always lie in the factual truths but in the emotional truths pressed into the fabric of stories.

On my father's side of the family this was apparent from a young age. I frequently doubted to factual nature of the stories I was told about my family past. But I also recognized that there was something deeper trying to be said in these stories. Did it really matter whether we were outlaws in defiance of the King? (it turns out there were really, truly, family members who were runaway indentured servants-is that the origin of those claims?) No. I don't think those details are what matters. What matters is that the people telling those stories wanted the listeners to know that our family, our clan, stood up for the underdog, that we told truth to power, that we held ourselves to higher standards than blind obedience to an earthly ruler. The important part was this: do right and do it honorably. (whether that is what my forebears had in mind I couldn't tell you, but that is the take away I got)

Writing stories about my real family members and real family events never presented a problem to me. It was just what we did. And it didn't matter if I had to elaborate details, take out inconvenient parts, or entirely make things up. Fact and fiction always blur, none more so than in the stories we tell about ourselves.

Howevere, it is one thing to tell a story to yourself and write it down for yourself and quite another to realize that other people will read it. Other people who know the factual parts of the story as well as, or better than, you. Other people who may object to how you have portrayed certain events or certain people. Or even themselves. As a writer you have a question to ask yourself: do I edit to make these people happy or do I keep my story as I want to tell it? There is no easy or simple answer to this. I have very few relatives left and, so, this made my own decision easier. With fewer people to please I had fewer people to worry about criticizing or picking apart my work. And, so, I took the brave step of keeping my story as I wanted to tell it. A story that hits a few factual truths but, more importantly in my mind, revererates with emotional truths that reflect not only those family members I spent my life interviewing but also my own. And as I continue to write their stories I find my own emotional truths ever more wrapped up in theirs. I find myself with