is it unfair to write about people you know?
2:4
Hello reader,
I’m writing a creative non-fiction piece to submit to a magazine. They’re asking for stories about “love you can’t grasp.” I never expected to write openly about a relationship—this story is one I’d thought about fictionalizing for a while—but I know a good match when I see one.
Do I have to tell him, though? What’s the etiquette to writing about the people in your life? It’s one thing for them to inspire fictional characters or situations, but non-fiction!
Sometimes when one of you tells me in real life you read my newsletter, I’m taken aback. It can be easy to forget that actual people read what I write here, even though I asked you to do it. And I don’t know. I guess I get shy when I think about the vulnerability in people reading my actual thoughts.
Though that is the nature of what I’m doing here! I just don’t know how I feel about also submitting someone else to that—writing a story about what happened between us. Details to characterize, estimated quotes. To the best of my knowledge and belief, this is true and correct.
Even if I omit specifics, give him an alias. Is it unfair? Betraying? Is it an honor?
In any case, I’m going to write it. And I hope it gets published. If it does, I suppose I’ll send him a link (???)
I’d say I’m mostly afraid of us being misunderstood. You know when you tell someone about a disagreement you’ve had and they really shit on the person you were disagreeing with but that wasn’t the point of the story? Maybe you’ve got on rose colored glasses about the situation, or maybe some things are complicated.
(I’m nauseatingly tender about things like this. Perhaps I’m a romance writer.)
All my love.
Yours,
Z
I have mixed feelings about it, personally, and I share your uncertainties. I wrote a piece last year inventing a character based on someone I met (a transit worker who I used to chat with on my commutes), and I tried to separate the character from the real person in various ways out of respect for privacy/good sense, but I still felt kind of dirty writing it. I don't want to violate anyone's privacy but also inspiration is inspiration—we unconsciously "steal" ideas from real-life people and events all the time.
Will you give us the story you write too? Writers are makers of Truth and Lies, but we are most certainly also storytellers. Names are part of life, and when you know whom specific Jeremy you wrote about, we don't. <333 hope the story will be published !! good luck