“From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork”
J.K. Rowling's Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Yes, and No.
Perhaps every story we tell has some form of truth in it of our own lives, whether fiction or not. Perhaps we cannot escape from this.
This is all dependent of course, upon the extent to which our writing is self-conscious of said truth-telling. Perhaps the story we tell is the truth of our lives because we believe it to be true. Memories are vague and adapted; the human mind is unreliable and distorts what we cannot remember. If, however, we know we are editing and adapting the facts of our lives for whatever reason (to be entertaining, to be original, to avoid displaying emotions and experiences we would rather forget..) then there is likely to be a contrast between what is true and what we tell.
A wise woman once said that her writing life was 'the inability to distinguish between the real and the imagined, or rather the attitude that what we consider real is also imagined.' So although there are many differences between our experience, our memory, our testimony and the final document, eventually what is true and what is imagined combine to make our work our own.
Perhaps we are unable to separate the two, whether we like it or not.
J.K. Rowling's Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Yes, and No.
Perhaps every story we tell has some form of truth in it of our own lives, whether fiction or not. Perhaps we cannot escape from this.
This is all dependent of course, upon the extent to which our writing is self-conscious of said truth-telling. Perhaps the story we tell is the truth of our lives because we believe it to be true. Memories are vague and adapted; the human mind is unreliable and distorts what we cannot remember. If, however, we know we are editing and adapting the facts of our lives for whatever reason (to be entertaining, to be original, to avoid displaying emotions and experiences we would rather forget..) then there is likely to be a contrast between what is true and what we tell.
A wise woman once said that her writing life was 'the inability to distinguish between the real and the imagined, or rather the attitude that what we consider real is also imagined.' So although there are many differences between our experience, our memory, our testimony and the final document, eventually what is true and what is imagined combine to make our work our own.
Perhaps we are unable to separate the two, whether we like it or not.
The wise woman was, of course, Margaret Attwood, but Albus Dumbledore is pretty cool too.
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