Writing For Revenge

My teacher calls it bravery, I call it stupidity. There comes a time in writing where it’s very hard to create something from nothing. Often in art, whether it’s from someone very famous, or a first timer, friends of authors/artists will see some traits of themselves in characters or having a situation they recognise as something very similar to their reality. Whether they take this lightly or not I realized today in Non-Fiction class that there is a very fine line to creativeness in writing when it comes to defamation of a character.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is why can’t authors just be particularly more careful with people’s feelings in both fiction and non-fiction? Sometimes all it takes is a change of hair style, change of what they do for a living, even background information that is just completely unnecessary to the piece. Perhaps, as my teacher pointed out, it stems from authors writing for revenge, a type of stab at people they’ve hated in the past, and getting it off their chest in writing, the only way they can truly express themselves. But what about the people you care for that you write about? Sometimes I find it hard to insert the truth in there, so afraid that it hurts too much. Writers might find it so difficult, that its often hard not too, if you feel that passionate about the piece. But in some examples I’ve seen in writing, there has got to be a time when enough is really enough.

I’ve had similar problems in my writing in both my fiction pieces and my non fiction pieces. There are three examples off the top of my head and how I have dealt with them so far:

The first is from last year when I wrote a joint piece on how my Dad felt in an uncomfortable situation and linked that to how I felt when I was bullied in year 11. If I ever published these two pieces, SOMEONE would have recognised who they were, and not because I said it was my Dad, but because of the way I portrayed him, the way I explained his looks, demeanour and even some of the things he is likely to say in that situation. Likewise with the girls who bullied my group. If one of them were to read it, although I took a stab at their looks, personality and the way they held themselves as people there is no doubt that they would recognise themselves purely because of the quotations and the fact that they were in the situation themselves. I guess this was my form of writing for revenge, but I don’t think it would have helped if I ended up publishing it. This was for my assignment and only seen by two other students and my teacher (so, no emotional connection to me or the people mentioned) and the reason why I didn’t publish it was not because I wasn’t brave, but because I was smart. I knew it would get back to those girls if I ever did publish it, and because I painted them in a cruel light, from it being in my perspective, I would have gotten into trouble for writing what I perceived was truth. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to, but I’m no Helen Garner, I can’t reveal my life and other peoples in such a way to offend, no matter what they did to me in the first place.

The second case is writing my fiction novel. Now, to fully explain myself, the Mother character is everything opposite in what a Mother should be. She’s unloving, cruel, cynical etc. However, I do know that it’s very hard to create something from nothing. So from all the times I’ve been upset with my own Mum, even when the situation was completely different, I was able to describe how the Mother feels in the story and how her daughter feels. The way she would stand and hold herself, the accusing facial expressions and finally the body language that dismisses the daughter in such a way that the Mother was framed as a completely difficult person to live with.
To stress even more, my Mum is not like this at all. She is my female hero and I love her. But as I read back on some of the paragraphs involving the Mother I couldn’t help but wonder, would people see traits of my Mums behaviour in the character? Or worse, would my Mum see it herself? When the only example of a Mother figure is my own biological Mother, how can I explain this woman if I only have a single view of one?

The third example is another Non-Fiction piece that I wrote this year which I am trying to get published. The person I am writing about is from Geelong and I’m capturing how she feels at her age living there and I compare that to how she lives in Melbourne. In no way did I expect her to view herself as ‘whiny’ and ‘immature’. Of course, it was never my intention to frame her in that light at all and in fact I was complimenting her, but I did find it difficult to let this thought go. Although everyone else who read and critiqued it didn’t think she was framed in that way, the fact that SOMEONE interpreted the wrong meaning made me want to change the whole thing; because someone is enough, and worse than no one. She still very much wants me to publish it, admits she was just being protective of herself, and was only questioning whether people could see it that way and not necessarily what she thinks, but it makes you wonder, how careful you have to be with words. One word can skew the meaning in a completely different light even when you don’t intentionally make it so.

It is definitely a challenge to think about when writing.

The article that raised this issue and made me really think about what I was putting into my writing is called Thinly Disguised by Caroline Baum from The Age Newspaper. Full article here:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/19/1058035185380.html

Thoughtfully yours,

Jinx xx