How Much Can We Write About Our Families (as non-fiction writers)?

Should we tell all truths in personal essays or creative nonfiction?

As a creative writing teacher, students sometimes ask about how to write a personal essay without bashing or trashing the real-life characters (family, friends, employers, ex partners) therein.

I never have an easy answer to this to tell-or-not-to-tell dilemma.

However, I draw upon my experiences in healthcare communications to urge students to ask themselves some hard questions.

These are the same questions that I used to ask patients at the healthcare organizations where I was privileged to interview patients or their families

I used to work with particularly vulnerable and disenfranchised patients, so there was a clear and fragile power deferential between me and my healthcare system and those who were willing to tell their story.

Equally, a similar power imbalance may exist between you, the clever-clogs writer, and the family or friend or neighbor you want to write about.

Here’s what I used to ask healthcare patients:

“Five or 10 years from now, will you be proud of this story being out in the world? Being visible to employers? Your children’s teachers?”

When they ask, here’s what I ask nonfiction writing students:

(a) In the deepest part of your soul, how much does it matter to you to tell your own story and its temporal and emotional truths?

(b) Why are you really telling this story? Like, really?

(c) Are you willing to risk and accept the potential fallout—all the way up to family estrangement—if or when your piece or book gets published?

Of course, there’s also the issue of libel which, by the way, can also apply to fiction writing.

As a Writer, Here’s How I Handle the Nonfiction Truth Issue

In his creative nonfiction “police” essay, Lee Gutkind, the founder of Creative Nonfiction, posits that truth in nonfiction writing is “a question of doing the right thing, being fair, following the golden rule.”

So in deciding between what to tell and what to withhold, Gutkind’s “golden rule” guideline is the best I know. In some ways, it’s the writer’s counterpart of the do-no-harm Hippocratic Oath taken by medical providers.

In my own non-fiction work, I try very hard to do one of these:

(a) Distinguish between the issue of incorrect or misremembered facts (No, Daddy had a blue car in 1987) and the possibility that the uninvited family fact-checker has their own story or agenda.

(b) Only tell or voice what I’m qualified or morally sanctioned to tell or voice. In other words, I can tell you how my father looked when driving that blue car in 1987, but unless he told me, I cannot say whether he felt proud or ashamed of said blue car. I cannot co-opt his story or experience—either as a father or as a car owner.

As writers, we want to engage our readers—both those who agree and who disagree with our point of view. Most of the time, so long as they’re coming from qualified readers, writers welcome suggestions on how the narrative can be clearer and better.

But before we write that first-person narrative story or personal essay, we need to ask ourselves: “Is this my heartfelt truth, as I remember it? And: Can I tell this truth without damaging someone else?”

Interested in this writing topic? You may also enjoy: Writing Truth in Personal Essays, Creative Nonfiction and Memoirs

AND How Soon (and with whom) Should You Share Your Writing Drafts?

Writing Creative Nonfiction: 5 Things It's Taught Me About All Writing

Once, at one of those literary receptions, a male writer friend introduced me to a woman I didn't know. 

“This is Aine,” he said. “She’s “bitextual." 

The friend smiled and shook hands, but it was one of those twitchy, embarrassed smiles.   

 “She writes fiction and  non-fiction,” my male-writer friend explained. Hence: bi-textual."

“Oh! Oh, I see!” The smile brightened.  

I started out writing fiction, but then, soon after my first short-story publication, I began reading and dabbling in creative nonfiction.   I enjoyed the variety and the synergy between the two genres. The more I wrote in each, the more the differences and similarities emerged.  Also, I began to understand how some topics are a natural fit for first-person narrative, while others are just natural candidates for fiction.

For over two years now, I’ve been monotextual.  It's not a permanent condition. I hadn’t planned it this way.  But after many stalled fiction projects, I started a book-length memoir about my immigration to the USA at age 24. Soon into this project, I knew why my previous works had sputtered out. I needed to live monogamously in Non-Fiction-Land. Not `till death do us part.  But for as long as it takes to get this book (and a few essays) finished.

Now, I’m over one-third of the way into the memoir project, and waiting to hear my agent’s reaction to the most recently submitted material.

The creative nonfiction gurus tell us (correctly) that the best personal writing employs fiction-writing techniques. 

For me, the reverse has also been true.  Writing memoir has provided a window into the entire writing process. 

Here are 5 things I've learned: 

1.     Master the narrative dance:   In memoir, we must immediately master that interplay between narrator,  author and narrative.   This three-way dance is damn hard.  But in fiction and non-fiction, a well-choreographed process makes for better work. 

2.     Be smart. Be very smart: Before I started this project, I read lots of women’s memoirs.  Some I abandoned after three chapters. Others I slogged through, hoping they would get better. Still others were high on cute, but low on substance. Then there were those few that I devoured, whose authors I wanted to invite to my house for tea. Heck, I'd have had them move right into my spare room.

So what made this last group different? Brain power or, rather, the author's courage to reveal that brain power on the written page.  From the narrative voice to the depth of analysis and supporting research, these women opted for intelligent over gimmicky--often, I'll bet, at the cost of book sales. These women know and show that good writing--in all genres--should be an interplay of the intellect and the heart.

3.     There are no short cuts:   I used to envy those authors who could bang out a novel in a year, or who landed a three-book contract with a three-year deadline.  Not anymore. Writing a memoir has  taught me how to write to my own creative rhythms, to slow down, go deeper, to give the work the time and thought and love it deserves.

 4.   Write brave: There is no writing scarier than memoir. But scare is good. Courage is good. Writing our way into and through the scare is what we must do.  For all writing. For all genres.

 5.   Meaning:  In his wonderful book, “The Van Gogh Blues,” author, creativity coach and psychologist  Eric Maisel writes about deriving and sustaining meaning in and from our creative work--and how our work must give meaning to our lives.  Writing my memoir has been an “Ah! Hah!” moment in which I finally “get” what Maisel means. It has re-invested me in the process of writing as a self- and life-sustaining venture, as a way of forging my own identity in the world.  

Do you write in more than one genre? If so, how do your two genres inform or cross-pollinate each other?