Photographer © Cathy Evers Cooke

Sunday, June 27, 2010

"Fact vs. Fiction: The Joys and Pitfalls of Writing Memoir"

Zoe FitzGerald Carter

When Zoe FitzGerald Carter began writing a book about her mother's decision to end her life, she intended to write it as a novel--a fictionalized version of events. But when her agent convinced her to try writing it instead as memoir, she found that the writing was easier to generate because she was drawing from real events, real emotions. The challenge of having to put these events on the page led her to re-live and reconsider the past. And having to carve out a story rather than just "dumping the notebook" forced her to consider what about a story is truly interesting to readers. To write the story as truth rather than fiction enriched her.

But choosing truth over fiction also came with repercussions. How would the people she wrote about react to the book? Could she be sued for invasion of privacy? Libel, even? What it would have meant to her parents, both of them deceased, that she was writing about and exposing them in this way? And most important, by writing and selling her story, Imperfect Endings, would she somehow "lose" it--would it no longer "belong" to her?

Zoe FitzGerald Carter is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and has written for numerous publications including New York magazine, The New York Observer, Premiere, and various national magazines. Imperfect Endings, her first memoir, won first place in the 2008 Pacific Northwest Writer's Association literary contest and was a finalist at The San Francisco Writer's Conference. It was also picked by Barnes & Noble as one of its 2010 Discover Great New Writers series. First serial rights went to O magazine and an excerpt appears in their March issue. http://zoefitzgeraldcarter.com