Day 86: Non-Fiction Fiction
I just wrote a whole entry worth about my upbringing and promptly saved it as a draft.
This is hours after telling one of my favorite people about the blog. I love her. She’s a nurturer by heart but also terrifying. Her systems have systems but it’s all done from a place of wanting to accommodate and make people happy. I don’t get the impression that she is doing it for acceptance or fear of judgement. Maybe it’s in her DNA. Over the weekend I mentioned to her that she was terrifying and she was aghast. It was hysterical. Scary people don’t even know how scary they are! She is so herself and wont take shit from anyone. And I love that. She once walked up to a cashier to get a refund with me because I was too scared to do it. I think her exact words were “Oh I love doing stuff like this!”.
Anywho, I told her I started this blog and expressed how much it’s been helping me these past few months. I started out by saying that “I’ve always identified myself as a writer, I want to write books.”. She asked what kind and I said “Non-fiction fiction". That’s what I shared earlier this year with my client and her fiction author friend.
It’s all to protect the people in my life. I believe I wrote before about reading Ashley Judd’s book and how she ripped into the way her mom and sister ganged up on her. I read her book when I was writing that first anonymous blog and it further impressed upon me not to share about my marriage or kids. Or origin family, or in laws, or friends, or clients.
When you write, it’s so one sided. It’s all about your perception. The “characters” in your story are one dimensional and don’t get the opportunity to stand up for themselves, justify their actions/behaviors, or potentially clarify a misunderstanding of the authors interpretation.
Am I just hiding?
I don’t think so. There would be real-world repercussions for some of the people if what I wrote was read by employers. Some peoples whole identity is wrapped up in their career and losing that stability would upend their psychological safety.
And I protect my psychological safety so why wouldn’t I do that for others? It’s extremely important.
That’s were the non-fiction fiction comes in. I could create these characters loosely based on situations that happened and get closure that way. By putting it out into the world. Hoping that someone would read it and be able to see things in a different light. Or feel validated from experiencing something similar. Maybe be able to empathize or heal a little bit.
And if I’m writing fiction the characters can be embellished. That way the reader doesn’t think they know everything. And don’t worry, I’m not thinking I’m breaking ground here. I’ve read at the beginning of many books, “Any similarities of people, places of things is purely coincidental.”.
My friend said, “This can be your new years resolution! To write a book!”. I laughed. If only. But, we’ll see. If you would have told me earlier this year I would commit to publishing a post a day for a year I would have laughed. Life is funny.
