Fiction, Fac-tion and Ex-Dreads

21/09/14

However civilly a relationship ends, there is always the brooding fear that the events of how your relationship (or affair) panned out will be dreadful when exposed by a single narrative.
Worse still, if the parties in the relationship are (where) writers or love(d) telling stories.

Writing is therapeutic for some people, and the only way they heal a hurt is by telling a story about it, usually with a twist when the author makes it fiction. For failed relationships, the story could go from being a comedy to a gory tragedy depending on whether the author still loves you, wants you back, held you blameless during the relationship or really hates you now.You are never sure whether you will be sensually explored, if you will be made out to be the villain or if you will be killed off. 

If the author really hates you now, chances are that it will end as a tragedy culminating in the death of the villain or the happening of a terrible event to that character. Being killed off with a sudden illness is usually considered good. You know the written-about ex is being let off lightly in the narrative.

Some exes are not that merciful. Walahi! You will suffer in that story. Even the supposedly sensual bits of your relationship may be explored with animalistic symbolism.

So, when I received a notification earlier today with snippets of a story I was promised by an ex from years ago, a fac-tion* he promised I would find 'interesting' , I felt cold all over. I am sure the villain will not be mercifully killed off in that story. She will probably be a ball-snipping monster with a speaking/learning disorder, or worse. 

Why do I feel this dread? Well, our breakup wasn't really that amicable. I just left the relationship without explaining myself or even discussing my reasons. It was almost 2 years after the fact that he realized why I left and apologized for it.

Yes, I am slightly anxious and waiting for this story. Fiction (Fac-tion) is a beautiful thing. It allows you vent in a way that saves you a trip to the hospital (or puts you there.)

(c) 2014.

*Fac-tion; A hydrid between a fiction and a non fiction. A fac-tion tells a story inspired by real events but allowing for an inaccurate narration of those events with some imaginative flair for dramatic or literary effects.

A Memoir Is A Status Update

I just read Dani Shapiro's article on the New yorker titled 'A memoir is not a status update' and I am thinking this writer gives little merit to the social evolution that is the emergence of the impulsive, seldom edited and filtered narrative that updated statuses are made of and how just important they can be to writers and memoirists, if put to good use.
In the article the author bemoans the effects of social media on writing thus;
 '...In an essay on Emily Dickinson, the poet Adrienne Rich once wrote, “It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment—that explodes in poetry.” We live in a time in which little is concealed, and that pressure valve—the one that every writer is intimate with—rarely has a chance to fill and fill to the point of explosion. Literary memoir is born of this explosion. It is born of the powerful need to craft a story out of the chaos of one’s own history. One of literary memoir’s greatest satisfactions—both for writer and reader—is the slow, deliberate making of a story, of making sense, out of randomness and pain...'' http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/memoir-status-update
This quote from Shapiro's article  is beautiful. I think it is kind of true to some extent too. For some writers,writing is a tortuous, slow process that marinates into something beautiful and complete, a process that is only perfected during a long period of incubation and birth. The very first time I read it,although I liked it, I saw the gaps in her brilliant lines. I think  Emily Dickinson's is sheer perfection and can do no wrong but Adrienne Rich's words do not fully encapsulate the genius that is the social media status-updating writer.

This reminds me of an encounter I had earlier.

Some months back, a Facebook friend and former Alma matter colleague invited me for dinner on her birthday. Our meeting that day was the first time we were ever talking face to face with each other but she knew quite a lot about me. She remembered an ex from Law school. She knew my current relationship, fun facts about my  daughter Merit and so much more. From Facebook statuses and photos, I knew just enough about her as well and the result of our evening together was just fantastic. At the end of our evening out I was thinking, this woman I thought rarely knows me can almost write a short memoir about me and be very correct in her narrative too! I have been told this and after that evening, i realized  some of it is true too. I am a sort valve and I tend to explode all around my friends and followers in some way or the other. I share a lot about some parts of me on Facebook and the other social media outlets that I frequent. Instead of dropping small quotes of sages like some people do, I write long status updates and sometimes blogs about events that I have had. The effect of this is that people get to know me and even form opinions about me, whether they are all positive or negative, I do not know.

From Shapiro's article, It does appear that some people underestimate the effect of the chronicling of events that social media provides but in the years to come, memoirs and books will be written from/about the tweets and updates that people have posted on their statuses. The chronicling of events that social media provides is the stuff that memoirs are made of. Anyone that trivializes this import of their daily spoken words on their pages may just have missed/is missing out on the gold that they are sitting on.

Oh! By the way, did you hear Kim Kadashian is working on a 'book' that only contains selfies of her? I read it will be called 'Selfish' or something. If people are already 'writing books' from impulsive photos taken with their iPhone's,   isn't it possible then that daily status posts of a writer's coinages and thoughts are a waste of writer-ly space?
Think again.
Seriously, wont it be pure genius if you wrote a book with just the status updates from the important moments of your life or those updates that caused the most storm on your timeline? You could title your book 'Status'. Did I just give you the greatest idea ever? Ah! Thank me later. I wont mind receiving an autographed copy when this book comes out though.

:-)