I had the chance to speak with two high school creative writing classes yesterday. I read portions of Penelope Ayers and they asked questions–How did you decide to make this story public? How many times did you rewrite the opening chapters? (And by the way, the answer there is somewhere between 30 and 50, I lost count) How long did it take?
The question I’ve thought about the most since then came at the end: “If you want to write a true story, but the real story isn’t the best version of the story, what do you do?”
I had already explained that memoir necessarily involves some compression of details. In Penelope Ayers the character “Susan,” for instance, is a combination of two real-life friends, and in the book we spend Christmas in New Orleans, whereas in real life we spent it in upstate New York. Upstate New York was irrelevant to the story, so I placed the scene in New Orleans instead. The story of our time together at Christmas is true, but my facts are wrong.
With those caveats out there, however, I still believe, as I told this young man, “You make the real story the best version of the story.” You don’t embellish. You don’t add dramatic symbols to illustrate the point. You don’t tie up loose ends. You let the real story reflect real life, in its messiness and ambiguities and uncertainties.
The real story is the best version of the story.
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