The Write Way

I've been doing a lot of messing around with pictures on Facebook lately. Part of it is just January boredom, and part of it has been a study in family history. Most of the pictures are black and white of me and my family and were taken in the 60's. It has been a lot of fun watching the comments and feedback from friends and family. 

One of the coolest things to come out of the exercise has been to hear the background behind the picture from my sisters and mom. In most of them, I am quite young and I don't remember the circumstances around the photos. My sisters are a few years older and they have a much better recall of those days. When I posted a couple, I thought they were taken at one of our old houses. Both of my sisters corrected my assumption by telling me that it was actually a different house. They did this for several pictures and circumstances around the pictures.

I say this because as a writer of memoir I realize a couple of things. 

First of all it is important that you get your facts straight. It doesn't always make much difference to your audience if it's spot-on correct, but it should to you. You're telling your story from memory and as a matter of ethics, you should try to write truth. You owe it to your readers. If you can't recall the details, figure them out. Another option would be to change the story to fiction. You can still base it loosely on truth, but then the details don't matter. 

The other thing I realize is that while I think I have a good understanding of some events and details, I am completely capable of making things up as the way things happened. They can become so real to me that I actually I believe they happened. The thing is, after talking to other sources, I am corrected and glad to be so. 

I want it right as much as the next guy. 

Blogging off...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

National Poetry Month: Issue 18

In a rush, a poem from Richard Brautigan from,  The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. A Good-Talking Candle                    by Richard Brautigan I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me,    so I lit a candle. and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep. Blogging off...
Read more

New Chapters

Image
 As many of you know I retired last week after almost 27 years at Waukesha County. It was a bit of a shock to some, in part because I am only 61. Nevertheless I'd given it much thought and talked it through with my family and determined it was time. I wanted to get out while I am healthy and perhaps more specifically just do something different. I am lucky enough to say I've loved my work over the past 37 years. GIS and mapping has been my passion since college and I was fortunate enough to get paid to do something I loved.  I'll be honest, while I looked forward to the date of retirement, I was not looking forward to the celebration. Like my daughter, who is more like me than not, I do not like being in the spotlight. While I've become more comfortable being in front of people in part because of my writing and its related promotion and readings, deep down I'm still an introvert with extrovert flares, as they say. But dreading it as I did, it turned out to be a spec...
Read more

Local Level Need

Image
A week and a half into retirement and I'm here to report that life is good on the other side. I've kept fairly busy so far, in fact when my wife was questioned by friends on "how Jim's retirement is going," she said, "He hasn't sat down." I think I'm still in the manic, must-get-stuff-done mode that happens when people get a week off of work. Gotta cram it all in. Well, I am starting to adjust to the fact that it will all be there tomorrow and next week, and if I don't get to all of it today, it's really okay. It's been a strange adjustment for sure, but one that I am beginning to appreciate more and more.  Before I decided to retire, one of the things I wanted to commit to was a regular stint of volunteer work. When I mentioned it to a friend who works for Frieden's Food Pantry, he suggested I look into helping in one of their four locations. They vary in the number of families that they serve, but they turn over a huge amount o...
Read more