When it comes to writing, where do you draw the line?
Do you ever feel like there are things you can’t say? Things you can’t share on your blog or social media. Things that are happening in your life and you really wish you could tell the world what’s going on because you could really use the support, but you can’t say it. Either it involves someone else, or it’s too personal, or it paints someone in a bad light. For whatever reason, you can’t share it.
I’ve felt that way a few times in my life. And there have certainly been things that have happened in the public eye, much to my dismay, that mean the first question people ask me when we’re face to face and no one is recording is “So, what really happened with so-and-so?” There’s things I don’t want to say because they would paint people in a bad light. People who are, for better or worse, a part of my life and I don’t want to have to defend them in the future. I think we’ve all been burnt by that at one time or another.
It’s really difficult, as a writer, being able to find the line between what you can share and what you can’t. And that line is always a moving target. For example, I try not to write about my stepdaughter. There’s a very simple reason for this: She is not my child. She is not me. And I have no right to tell her story. But that doesn’t mean I never say anything about her. I’ve even included photographs of her from time to time, although always with her permission. But it does mean it may appear to others that she is not an important part of my life, and that’s simply not true.
Recently I met a blogger for the first time “in real life” (gosh that phrase makes me skin crawl, I’m still real as I’m writing this!) and one of the things she said to me was that she’d stopped blogging because she couldn’t write about what was going on in her life. She and her husband had separated and she said “Whatever he did, whatever happened, he doesn’t deserve for his business to be made public on the internet” and she’s 100% right.
So at what point do our stories become someone else’s stories?
I’ve recently been tossing up the idea of writing about why I gave up my dog. It was a difficult decision to make, one I haven’t quite forgiven myself for, and it can suddenly sneak up and smack me at unexpected times. I’d like to be able to tell my story. But there’s an aspect to that story, one that is important to understanding why I truly did what I did, that isn’t mine to tell. I can’t skip over it because without that all important detail it seems I gave up my dog purely because I wanted to move in with my boyfriend, and that isn’t the truth at all, but it really isn’t my information to tell. And the person who the information belongs to would never want it told.
So how do you deal with that? Do you leave the whole story untold? Do you amend parts of it so it makes sense without that information? Do you change the information or the story so it’s actually not the true story at all, but one with the same essence, the same point?
I know when it comes to writing about friends many established authors change the details quite drastically so the essence of the story is the same but the players are unidentifiable. Kerri Sackville once told me she changes the names, marital status and number of children of people mentioned on her blog so her friends have entire alter-egos, and are therefore safe.
I find it a particularly difficult question when it comes to children. It’s easy for me to leave my stepdaughter out of stories as we don’t have custody of her, but what about when you have children who are in your house all the time? How do you leave them out? Do you? And if not, what happens when the children grow up?
I don’t really have the answers, so I’m looking to you guys for advice.
What do you do when you want to write the things you’re not allowed to say?
