What's the world coming to when authors don't write the truth?
Recently I was asked to participate on a writing panel; the subject was biographies and memoirs. My immediate instinct was to feel underqualified, I was nervous about getting up and being an “authority” on something I have yet to be fully part of: My memoir, while finished, is in the very, very, slow hands of the publishing world and is yet to be published.
After thinking on it for a week I realized that the eight years of studying, writing, finishing a book and getting an agent probably did mean I might have some kind of educated information to offer.
Thus I found myself facing a sold-out room in Los Angeles — some people even standing along the back — part of a handpicked panel of five. The moderator started with the obligatory introductions. I was last on the billing — rightfully so — as our panel included two best-selling ghost writers, two self-published women and me.
Everything was moving along in an adult, if mildly boring fashion, until the moderator asked our feelings on the recent pandemic of authors and publishers, passing off “fictionalized” stories as non-fiction and memoirs. We all have heard of the dastardly culprits — James Frey, Margaret B. Jones, Belgian author Misha Defonseca — who admitted to fabricating part or all of their so-called true-life stories.
I was taught memoir writing by trained journalist Samantha Dunn, who beat into our heads that the truth, and only the truth, belongs in non-fiction and memoir. Yes, memories are sometimes foggy, gray-hued things, but non-fiction authors must, to the best of our abilities, stay within the boundaries of truthful recall.
So when the moderator asked us to comment on what we thought about the lying authors, I was stunned when a fellow panelist — a best-selling ghost writer in the business more than 20 years — got up and said, “I think it’s great!”
He got a big laugh from the audience, and I figured it was just a “sound bite statement,” but, nope, he continued on, with a monologue about the merits of lying in writing.
Next came a question to the self-published author of a memoir about using composite characters, and she said it was because she had “too many people in her book.”
Talk about a panel of “professionals” advising an audience of newbies to be liars!
I had enough; I was no longer going to let the fact that my fellows were older — by 20-plus years, like most of the audience — intimidate me.
I took my turn with microphone in hand:
“No,” I said, “I’m sorry, but no, non-fiction is just that NON-fiction.”
I continued about the need for us as artists to take hold of our own personal integrity and be true to our word. I ended: “Because my mother taught me not to tell a lie.”
This really got everyone going, especially my fellows.
The self-pub lady got up, thanked me in a placating manner, then said she was also taught not to tell a lie, but had no choice, etc. As she sat back down, she whispered to me, “Only 2-year-olds don’t lie.”
Then the ghost guy got up, laughed at my naiveté, cited how everyone lies — our news, our politicians, tweeters — and that, “entertainment is entertainment.”
Wow.
Well, folks: This is what I believe.
Yes, we are in a world of false information, do we need to perpetuate the disease? If everyone is jumping off the bridge of compromise, do we all go too?
As an artist, part of the media, a creator and provider of information, the buck stops and begins here. All we truly have as humans is our integrity, our word, and if we so flippantly throw it away for the price of selling more books, newspapers, advertisements, cans of soup, then what do we have? A whole lot of people off the bridge and struggling to swim in mud.
Personally I’m sticking to the truth; clean and mud-free is prettier.
I would always rather be the example then the cause.