Dave Brigham's Blog - Posts Tagged "facebook"
Fake Memoirs In the Age of Facebook
I started writing my recently released debut collection of short stories, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity, roughly 10 years before it was published.
In 2000, I was working as an editor for a digital media company that covered the convergence of music, movies, TV and video games with the Internet. The job kept me busy, but in my spare time I conducted frivolous web searches for people I knew from high school and college, wondering where they were and what they were doing. I had little luck finding these people, or any information about them.
At the same time, I began writing rock-related short stories based on true events from my life. I wrote 17 or 18 of these stories and emailed them to a group of 40 or so friends and family, mostly just for the fun of it.
In their initial iterations, the tales that comprise (C)rock Stories mentioned many of my friends by their first names. Most of these friends I was still in touch with, and I knew they wouldn't mind being used as fictional characters. A few friends, however, were these same people whom I'd been unable to track down online. They were also the ones whose relationships to the unnamed narrator (AKA, me) in the series of stories I was developing were the most complicated.
I hadn't seen or heard from them in years, and frankly, I didn't expect to ever be in contact with them again.
Fast forward to 2008, by which time I'd finished rewriting the 15 stories that would eventually end up in my book. During the year, I joined Facebook, which was a great way to stay in touch with friends and family who are flung across the country. Alas, it was also a great way to reconnect with the friends with whom I had so long ago lost contact.
So I faced some decisions: do I leave the names of these friends in, or do I change them? Also, should I change the stories so they don't reflect too negatively on these friends?
I chose to change the names and alter the stories. I didn't make wholesale changes, but I wanted to make sure that I didn't leave in stuff that might upset my newly rediscovered friends. Yes, I censored myself. I stand by that decision. Since the audience, at least initially, for the book, is largely friends and family, I didn't want to roil the waters too much. There was plenty of bad language, bad decisions and immature behavior to do that.
With my next book, a humorous novel-in-progress about corporate espionage and space aliens, I'll leave behind any concerns about offending people I know. I'm gonna let my imagination loose...what a concept for fiction.
In 2000, I was working as an editor for a digital media company that covered the convergence of music, movies, TV and video games with the Internet. The job kept me busy, but in my spare time I conducted frivolous web searches for people I knew from high school and college, wondering where they were and what they were doing. I had little luck finding these people, or any information about them.
At the same time, I began writing rock-related short stories based on true events from my life. I wrote 17 or 18 of these stories and emailed them to a group of 40 or so friends and family, mostly just for the fun of it.
In their initial iterations, the tales that comprise (C)rock Stories mentioned many of my friends by their first names. Most of these friends I was still in touch with, and I knew they wouldn't mind being used as fictional characters. A few friends, however, were these same people whom I'd been unable to track down online. They were also the ones whose relationships to the unnamed narrator (AKA, me) in the series of stories I was developing were the most complicated.
I hadn't seen or heard from them in years, and frankly, I didn't expect to ever be in contact with them again.
Fast forward to 2008, by which time I'd finished rewriting the 15 stories that would eventually end up in my book. During the year, I joined Facebook, which was a great way to stay in touch with friends and family who are flung across the country. Alas, it was also a great way to reconnect with the friends with whom I had so long ago lost contact.
So I faced some decisions: do I leave the names of these friends in, or do I change them? Also, should I change the stories so they don't reflect too negatively on these friends?
I chose to change the names and alter the stories. I didn't make wholesale changes, but I wanted to make sure that I didn't leave in stuff that might upset my newly rediscovered friends. Yes, I censored myself. I stand by that decision. Since the audience, at least initially, for the book, is largely friends and family, I didn't want to roil the waters too much. There was plenty of bad language, bad decisions and immature behavior to do that.
With my next book, a humorous novel-in-progress about corporate espionage and space aliens, I'll leave behind any concerns about offending people I know. I'm gonna let my imagination loose...what a concept for fiction.
