Yellow House, short story published

I was a bit hesitant to publicize this recent short story publication—

Because the more I thought about it, the more self-conscious I became that it blurred the boundary between real life and fiction.

I know, I know we all have these thoughts, especially as creatives. At the same time readers are also sleuthing out connections between a writer and what might possibly be autobiography—or even not that sophisticated, they simply assume that someone is writing nonfiction when it is clearly fiction. For the writer: I remember at a Festival of Faith and Writing listening to Carlos Eire talk about how his book Waiting for Snow in Havana came into being. It was written as fiction, maybe in his mind a pretext to loosen him up and allow him to get words down on paper. Anyway, his editor asked how much of this is true, your life, and he answered all of it. They marketed it as memoir.

At that same conference I also sat in on a talk about the novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, who shared that he awoke from a nap and began writing about that dream, weaving in excerpts from his life. He thought he was writing magical realism memoir. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, In the fiction category.

All this to say, we may start one way and end another.

My intention with Yellow House was always to write a short story. I was inspired by a visit to Sweden to visit my old college roommate. Elements of the setting and our daily activities was woven into the narrative. The main character and her roommate share personal notes with myself and the person I did visit in Sweden in 2014, but I wrote from a place of creativity—not from trying to capture and detail real events.

But, perhaps not enough. I was having second thoughts. My conscience was bothering me. Had I stolen someone else’s story? Was I exploiting a friendship? I arranged a video call with my Swedish friend to talk this over.

My morning, her late afternoon, I caught up with her on an Italian holiday at a rental property. It all sounded so grand and exotic, I immediately wanted to absorb it into my life—BUT WAIT! This is exactly what I felt guilty of already!

I shared with her that I’d had a story accepted for publication. She, herself, is a journalist and creative writer; she congratulated me. Then I “confessed” to her my apprehensions, of where I might have crossed the line between fiction and nonfiction. I tried to encapsulate the story—where some details were taken from real life and where it diverged. It became apparent not even half way through the conversation that the story was nothing like real life. My friend did not take umbrage at how I framed the story or of what I summarized for her in the call. More than anything she was curious. She told me that she was also concerned about the same thing as she has thought of novelizing letters/diary/documents she has from her grandparents. She sort of wants to write/not write their story. How does one do this without feeling like you are exploiting the ones you love?

For me, I cannot help but pull from my own life AND make things up as I go along.

In the end I feel like I had her blessing and gave her a link to read Yellow House: https://ofrustandglass.com/passages-prose/

not the real house