Truth and Writing

The relationship between truth and writing, especially "nonfiction" writing, fascinates me. Our discussion last class paired with reading Inventing the Truth highlighted an important struggle I had as a young writer and one that I continue to grapple with in my writings today. As Russell Baker highlights in "Life with Mother," when I first began writing, I always felt the need to be a "responsible" storyteller. Just as Baker chronicles in his discussion, I meticulously combed my writing for discrepancies and flaws in the narrative. Even in my journals I was painstakingly accurate; I scribed every last detail of my life in countless diaries, the long descriptions often complete with precise diagrams of the rooms in which I was writing. While this was exhausting and often tedious, the reason I spent so much time on the details was simple; I didn't want to forget how that particular thought, day, or memory felt. I was afraid that the time so precious to me would slip away, forgotten, irretrievable.

After recently rereading parts of my old journals, I found myself in the same position as Russell Baker. Although my entires were, as Russell coined, "responsible," the writing lacked feeling. Instead of capturing the intense memories I so badly wanted to immortalize, I have bullet-points of how and when I completed mundane little tasks. Essentially, the feeling of being tethered to the details and constraints of producing "accurate" writing limited me from expressing my feelings. And in the end, I didn't have stories. I had lists.

The vivid memories of furiously scribbling every detail in my journals prompted me to reevaluate how I approach truth and writing. Instead of fixating on writing every story with a journalistic mindset, I will now "invent the story of my life" (Baker 37) in order to truthfully recreate my own narrative. Perhaps this is the best method, because, as Tim O'Brien aptly states in The Things They Carried, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179).

In short, perhaps nonfiction writing and truth aren't analogous. And that's okay. As Dave Eggers said of writing, truth and his readers in his own nonfiction masterpiece, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, "don't you know I am connected to you?" Nonfiction writing is about connections and not necessarily about being completely accurate. If I can connect to my audience or to my future students by twisting or "inventing" a few small truths, then the writing becomes meaningful and that, to me, is worth it.

Mackenzie