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man it's quiet out there in LJ land... is there anyone out there? Does everyone take a hiatus on the weekends or something?
anyway, the second half of my postings today is about writing. I was watching the Sunday Morning news program this morning, and there was a segment about this author namead Augusten Burroughs who wrote Running with Scissors . He's apparently written several memoirs based on his horrible childhood, even after apparently changing his name because he wanted nothing to do with his past. His brother has also written a memoir about their father, which is significantly different in tone and even in details than Augusten's. This could be because they each have selective memories about their father, based on their age, or experience. We all have different "emotional" recollections of the same event. So this brought up the subject of embellishment in writing memoirs - that is, whether or not it's fair to readers if writers "make up" or "embellish" some details about their lives in their memoirs. I guess some famous writer was on Oprah a few years back and admitted to having made up some details in his book and she called him a liar. (I won't go into my feelings about Oprah here - that's not what this is about)...
But in the interest of research and curiosity, I have a question for my writer friends:
If you are writing something that you call a memoir, which means an autobiographical account of personal experience, is it fair to make up some details, especially if it will make the writing more interesting?
When I was teaching composition at the community college, I used to tell my students that it was perfectly okay to embellish little details - if you don't remember what color someone's hair was, or exactly what they were wearing, or if you don't remember if it was cold or hot outside, etc. But beyond that, is it okay to embellish larger details, or whole segments of your life? If you do that, should you call your work fiction, or can you still call it memoir, as long as it's still based on personal experience?
I'd love your feedback, so you can either add your answer in the comments, or if it's easier, here's a nifty poll for you (or you can do both!!):
[Poll #1337461]
Thanks!!
anyway, the second half of my postings today is about writing. I was watching the Sunday Morning news program this morning, and there was a segment about this author namead Augusten Burroughs who wrote Running with Scissors . He's apparently written several memoirs based on his horrible childhood, even after apparently changing his name because he wanted nothing to do with his past. His brother has also written a memoir about their father, which is significantly different in tone and even in details than Augusten's. This could be because they each have selective memories about their father, based on their age, or experience. We all have different "emotional" recollections of the same event. So this brought up the subject of embellishment in writing memoirs - that is, whether or not it's fair to readers if writers "make up" or "embellish" some details about their lives in their memoirs. I guess some famous writer was on Oprah a few years back and admitted to having made up some details in his book and she called him a liar. (I won't go into my feelings about Oprah here - that's not what this is about)...
But in the interest of research and curiosity, I have a question for my writer friends:
If you are writing something that you call a memoir, which means an autobiographical account of personal experience, is it fair to make up some details, especially if it will make the writing more interesting?
When I was teaching composition at the community college, I used to tell my students that it was perfectly okay to embellish little details - if you don't remember what color someone's hair was, or exactly what they were wearing, or if you don't remember if it was cold or hot outside, etc. But beyond that, is it okay to embellish larger details, or whole segments of your life? If you do that, should you call your work fiction, or can you still call it memoir, as long as it's still based on personal experience?
I'd love your feedback, so you can either add your answer in the comments, or if it's easier, here's a nifty poll for you (or you can do both!!):
[Poll #1337461]
Thanks!!
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