Discussion → "persona"
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The existence of this group is a comfort to me but, once again, I must ask myself, "are the writers writing about what actually happened to them or are they making it up?"
Most of what I write is NEVER posted on Fictionaut.
I'm not sure I am capable of writing fiction anymore.
When my prose work gets rejected, I get comments like, "this is too depressing" and one comment was "this needs a better ending." My answer to this was: "Yes. It needs a better ending but this is all I was given."
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All of my work (practically) is real, based on real situations. I wrote "For a Wounded Boy," predicting my oldest son's future trajectory, and I was, sadly, not too far off. The piece is full of metaphor (a pink, extended one at that), but it's still real. How does one write what she does not know? All writers dig into their lived experience to write. Some just mask it in other costumes.
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'close my window' isn't made up... though in real life it happened all day every day for 18 months, not just one brief night. and he didn't swing in through an open window. haha. i sugared it.
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I have struggled mightily with my holocaust stories around this issue. If I wrote them in first person as memoir, I felt too vulnerable. If I wrote them in third person as fiction, I was contributing to Holocaust denial. I decided on a compromise. I always write the first draft in third person, then gradually edit them into first, telling myself that memoir is truth in fiction, that is, our memories and perceptions are not journalistic history. We are allowed to distort and alter. Memory is not a video-tape of what happened. Look at the research on eye witness testimony. You write your own truth and if you call it memoir, they can't bug you about the ending. If you call it fiction, they can and will. That's my two cents.
Group Description
This is a group for trauma stories. Writers often feel like no one wants to hear about it. How do you write about trauma without re-traumatizing the reader? How do you make it a gift rather than a burden? Think of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Trauma stories can be told and retold, each time from a different distance and perspective. Writing about trauma can be healing for the writer and the reader, though it has to be carefully, meticulously revised and revised and crafted so it is not just a "spill." Post as many stories as you want. This seems to be a very slow-moving group.
This is a public group.
Anyone can see it and join.