Falsity in Truth

At first I had a hard time deciding where to draw the line between telling the truth in non-fiction and allowing your imagination to take root. For me I would hope to tell the truth in any piece labeled non-fiction. As a writer we have to realize that there is a point where you run into your own lack of memory. The truth is as people/human beings because we love stories we lie even to ourselves in order to make our own lives more interesting. There is that point where a story gets mushy in your own mind and you begin to question if that event really happened or you wanted it to happen. For me personally the type writer scene in breaking clean didn’t feel like a betrayal at all. To me writing is about the emotion and if it felt like he wrecked her type writer than on some level in her mind he did. In a way that is just as valuable and powerful as if it had actually happened. There was also a part of me that wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he really did wreck her type writer and for fear of losing face denied it. Even if she did apologize and agree to change it. Perhaps she did so out of a desire to avoid public conflict. Maybe she was just being the bigger person. However Here I also find myself fearful and a little upset for the father who may have in actuality did nothing and perhaps only meant the best for her. As a writer my biggest fear would be hurting someone on that level no matter what they may have done to deserve it. In life sometimes there are multiple truths and things get fuzzy. No matter how much research you put into a piece there may be pieces of it that are untrue. That is how conflict arises in daily life. It become a battle of he said she said where both sides believe they are right when in fact perhaps both of them have it wrong.

In discussing this story in workshop I began to see the value of honest wording. She could have easily said it felt like he killed the type writer and still it would have been a powerful point in the story. There are also so many genres and ways to preface your piece. All you have to do is admit that perhaps it isn’t all true and you save your readers from a sense of betrayal and perhaps ease the burden of those you talk about in your story. But if you do that everything would have some sense of falsity to it and there would be no non-fiction. In the end I have to come to the conclusion that truth is in itself an illusion and as a reader and a writer I really don’t care whether what she said was truth or not. Only that what she felt and made me feel was real.