(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Question: Did [X‑event] really happen to you?

Short Answer: Yes.  But prob­a­bly not. Although in truth, absolute­ly.  

Long Answer:

Writ­ers tell the truth by lying, at least the fic­tion ver­sions do, and that’s what we’re most­ly talk­ing about here at WAW. If I can’t achieve per­fect verisimil­i­tude while lying through my guile­ful lit­tle writer­ly teeth, I’m not sure what the hell I’m even doing here. So if you’re look­ing to fact-check me like I’m a jour­nal­ist or some­thing, I’ll prob­a­bly keep you quite busy, but if you lis­ten close­ly, you’re prob­a­bly going to get more actu­al hon­esty than from most peo­ple who describe events “as they real­ly hap­pened.”  

But yes, it prob­a­bly hap­pened. Maybe. I just may have some strange rela­tion­ships with the truth.

Once in a while I write an arti­cle that isn’t intend­ed to be the usu­al shtick (like “Chang­ing the Creepy Guy Nar­ra­tive”).  It’s often way out­side the realm of writ­ing and con­tains events that––to me––involve enough grav­i­tas that sto­ry­telling about them in a way that is not CLEARLY fic­tion might be hurt­ful to those who have expe­ri­enced the events for real. It’s usu­al­ly pret­ty easy to tell when I’m being hon­est.

In gen­er­al though, grains of salt. In my writ­ing you’ll find com­pos­ite char­ac­ters, char­ac­ters who are frac­tured aspects of real peo­ple, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions, fab­ri­ca­tions, alien inva­sions, cloning machines, and talk­ing cats.….just in case some­one out there had it in their head to go A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces on me. 

So did it real­ly hap­pen? Absolute­ly. Sort of. Maybe. Undoubt­ed­ly. Did it real­ly hap­pen exact­ly the way I said? Per­haps. Prob­a­bly not. Almost assured­ly not. Except yeah. If I got some details wrong, it’s prob­a­bly because they were bet­ter off hap­pen­ing the way I said. Details need to know who’s in charge. Did I change some facts with­out chang­ing the core truth, or in fact to illu­mi­nate it? Almost cer­tain­ly.  

Or…did you real­ly think I actu­al­ly lived with a team of super­heroes? 

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.