ethics and such

Chapter 10--The Ethics of Creative Nonfiction
There's a thin line between creative nonfiction and just pure fiction. It's easy to blur the lines between reality and imagination in art. Emotional truth and factual truth are really where lines blur together--should you write it as you remember it, or how it really happened? But if you're careful and make sure that the reader knows what is true and what is not, no one is cheated. Then there's the always dangerous task of talking about real people and real moments. The best advice that I found in this chapter was basically: write first, worry about the red tape later. The most important part of writing is to put what needs to be said. If you're worried about legal issues or pissing people off at the beginning of a project, it's probably not even worth your time.

Some questions--
1. Is it possible to really tell the truth? Or is truth subjective?
2. Does calling it "fiction" even when it's based on truth change the way people will read it?

Ruthless with Scissors
Memoirists are not the most trusted people right now. The thing I'm wondering about more than anything is--was the family really that affected by what he wrote? I can understand their shock at being named in People magazine, but really. Did Theresa really have to go to the emergency room for vomiting? That's what seemed fishy to me.
I think that the Turcottes missed the point of what a memoir is, and Burroughs should look at his own motives as a writer. Was he trying to write a malicious portrait of these people? Was he trying to tell his own story or just sell books? A memoir is about the writer's individual experience, maybe not verbatim facts. I think that People magazine should be sued above anyone else for revealing the family's identity, even if Burroughs admits that he was not entirely careful about masking their identity. This is just another learning experience for us creative nonfiction writers--write what needs to be written, but remember that people's lives are literally on the line.

Some questions--
1. Is emphasizing a person's bad characteristics or presenting them as one-sided as bad as lying?
2. How do you know when to draw the line, when to leave out painful memories?
3. Will people's views of memoirists ever recover after Frey and Burroughs?