A Goodreads user
asked
Mary L. Tabor:
People tend to take "write what you know" to mean "take facts from your own life and build your fiction around them" but maybe it's more useful to think of it as "make use of invention to explore your own emotions"? But that brings me to the question -- if your novel Who by Fire goes places your memoir couldn't quite, what sorts of things might (Re)Making Love do that your novel is unable?
Mary L. Tabor
“Write what you know” in fiction does not mean “write your life.” It’s better explained by acknowledging that artists who write close-to-the-bone rely on the unconscious mind to do the work of invention.
You can tell when you’re reading work that does that. One extraordinary example is the unforgettable and brilliant work of Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude feels so real that nothing can compare with its brilliance. I am quite certain that even as Gabo invented, he wrote from his own unconscious knowing.
As I said in answer to your first question, I am inside all my characters. My novel is a fictional tale—the narrator is a man and well-versed in Physics, in Quantum Mechanics, in finance. He plays the piano. I can barely balance my check book and I don’t play an instrument, but I did years and years of research to create my narrator’s voice and to think the way Robert would. In this way fiction released me to write the story as if I were my husband who had left me and then lost me, meaning totally lost through death.
I am every character in the novel. I tell stories about myself all through this novel, stories I don’t actually know. My daughter, who is in fact a philosopher, accuses me regularly of remaking the past.
Memory by its very nature is flawed. Revisiting memory again and again is the way we search for the narrative of our lives.
William Faulkner says in Light in August, “Memory believes before knowing remembers.”
The difference between memoir and fiction is that memoir is bound to the facts. Fiction, on the other hand, when it is startlingly good often reads like memoir in this sense: We believe it as if it is happening as we read. A gorgeous example is Lydia Davis’s The End of the Story.
In the memoir (Re)Making Love, I recall events. I cannot make up those events to suit the narrative. I cannot lie in the book. But, for example, the psychiatrist in the chapter “Something Old for Something New” would surely not tell the story the way I have—with the notable exception of the phone conversation between us that he recorded, transcribed and then e-mailed to me.
The reason I chose memoir as my form for this tale is that, in this case, the truth is stranger than fiction. I don’t think anyone would believe my story if it were written as fiction. In that sense it’s a romantic comedy that really happened—but was deeply wounding to live through.
You can tell when you’re reading work that does that. One extraordinary example is the unforgettable and brilliant work of Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude feels so real that nothing can compare with its brilliance. I am quite certain that even as Gabo invented, he wrote from his own unconscious knowing.
As I said in answer to your first question, I am inside all my characters. My novel is a fictional tale—the narrator is a man and well-versed in Physics, in Quantum Mechanics, in finance. He plays the piano. I can barely balance my check book and I don’t play an instrument, but I did years and years of research to create my narrator’s voice and to think the way Robert would. In this way fiction released me to write the story as if I were my husband who had left me and then lost me, meaning totally lost through death.
I am every character in the novel. I tell stories about myself all through this novel, stories I don’t actually know. My daughter, who is in fact a philosopher, accuses me regularly of remaking the past.
Memory by its very nature is flawed. Revisiting memory again and again is the way we search for the narrative of our lives.
William Faulkner says in Light in August, “Memory believes before knowing remembers.”
The difference between memoir and fiction is that memoir is bound to the facts. Fiction, on the other hand, when it is startlingly good often reads like memoir in this sense: We believe it as if it is happening as we read. A gorgeous example is Lydia Davis’s The End of the Story.
In the memoir (Re)Making Love, I recall events. I cannot make up those events to suit the narrative. I cannot lie in the book. But, for example, the psychiatrist in the chapter “Something Old for Something New” would surely not tell the story the way I have—with the notable exception of the phone conversation between us that he recorded, transcribed and then e-mailed to me.
The reason I chose memoir as my form for this tale is that, in this case, the truth is stranger than fiction. I don’t think anyone would believe my story if it were written as fiction. In that sense it’s a romantic comedy that really happened—but was deeply wounding to live through.
More Answered Questions
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more
Aug 30, 2014 09:20AM · flag
Aug 30, 2014 09:20AM · flag