Going Home with Fiction Writers Review
Posted on 28 May 2012
I’m thrilled to share that the Fiction Writers Review has posted an interview with yours truly. Anne Stameshkin — a fellow writer from Lancaster, PA — asks me some wonderful questions about writing, publicity, Living Arrangements, short fiction, and more.
I love the Fiction Writers Review and I think you should all head over there immediately — not only to read my interview, but to check out their many book reviews, the Stores We Love series, learn how you can win free books, and much more.
You can find my full interview here, but I’m including a quick look at one of the questions below:
Do you cringe when writers offer advice like “write as if your parents are dead”? What do you think this saying means?
I’m about to start working on some nonfiction pieces about my mother and our relationship before her death. Would I be focusing on these stories and on this time in my life had she lived? No, and not only because her death is what shaped those months and years into a defining point in my life. I’m also not sure how I’d feel if she could read it.
There is a freedom that comes in writing about someone who is no longer alive, but there is also a responsibility. My mother isn’t here to defend herself. While I’m free to write about her as I see fit, I understand more than ever the importance of being honest and fair to my memories of her.
Some writers are held back by worries of how their families will react to their writing, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction. I can’t argue with the “write as if your parents are dead” advice if it helps these writers let go. Of course, that advice mostly embraces the first piece of what I mentioned above—the freedom—but the responsibility remains, whether or not the person has passed.
And speaking of Fiction Writers Review, you still have a few days remaining to win a copy of Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall, which I’m giving away as part of FWR’s Short Story Month collection contest giveaway. Just leave a comment here to enter to win.
8 responses to Going Home with Fiction Writers Review
Leave a Response
Living Arrangements
Click the cover to buy Living Arrangements
Follow
You give a great interview, Laura, and I loved what you wrote about your mother. She would be so proud of you.
Thanks, Averil. I always hope I’m serving her well whenever I mention her in interviews.
The answer to this question is complicated for sure. But I do feel that I have an even greater responsibility to a person who’s passed — after all, they can’t defend themselves. I need to get it as right as I can.
I used to say I felt more free to write my memoir after my mother died, but now I don’t know how true that is. Now that I’m a few drafts in, it’s all the other people I’m worried about.
Yep — “all those other people,” and they will always be there to some extent. I have a friend who wishes there was a way her entire family/hometown could conveniently never know when her book is published or that it exists at all. Everyone else, meanwhile, is fair game.
I also feel that there’s really no way to do it in a way that would make everyone feel all warm and cozy. I mean, they’re not all warm and cozy now, so really of what importance is my little book?
There’s an intriguing Franzen essay about this subject in his new collection FARTHER AWAY. AmyG sent it to me. He talks about using some of his brother’s personal experiences in THE CORRECTIONS, and how conflicted he was about it. Their dialogue about the whole thing is worth reading.
A very good interview Laura.
I loved reading this post, and your interview, Laura! Like other posters, I’ve debated the responsibility of writing or avoiding writing about interesting stories from my family. So far, I’d managed to write other things — and even then, found myself realizing that they could still think I’m writing about them. It is too easy to end up having a character who has certain universal experiences in common with a family member, so they could jump to wondering if it was them even when you’d completely avoided it. For ex, if I write about a divorced mother, even completely invented, will my mother wonder if it’s her? I realized that it was easy, too, to end up writing a wildly imagined story and still have it fit the pattern of one of the stories in my family, that my conscience has avoided telling. For ex, the boss of one of my short story characters throws himself off a building, which fits the story, but I wrote it without yet knowing that my cousins’ stepfather had done that. So I guess I figure there’s no way around it — we manage to write something close to people’s stories, even when trying not to.
I have had people recognize themselves in characters that I am 100% confident are not based on them. And then there was the time my mother saw herself in one of my earliest stories: http://lauramaylenewalter.com/?p=100