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Considering that this was the view from my bed, I honestly can't complain at all:

Anyway, I'm feeling refreshed. I made some progress on the book and some progress in lying about and snoozing. I even took a brisk early-morning walk to the nearest Starbucks for my morning hit. It was good.

I'm sure many of you realized that my recent ranting had everything to do with things going on in my life that I didn't mention on the blog. I probably didn't make that clear, as I was going out of my way to protect the privacy of the people involved. I do appreciate all the kind words and such people offered, and I really hope my ranting wasn't perceived as whoring for comments. It wasn't. In fact, I seriously considered closing comments with each of those posts. I probably should have but ultimately I'm glad I didn't.

I've been thinking a lot about honesty in writing for the past few days. Actually, that's something I think about a lot, since I'm in the process of editing a book that probably falls into the "memoir" category. But I'm completely obsessed with the unfolding drama surrounding James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. I haven't read the book yet; I've had it on my library waiting list for a few months. Only 98 people in line ahead of me - woo! By the time I read it, we'll probably find out that James Frey is really a Munchkin operated by a man behind a curtain. But I digress.

I've read a lot of memoirs in the past year or so while working on this project. Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, Franz Wisner's Honeymoon with My Brother, Haven Kimmel's A Girl Named Zippy, Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone (one of my all-time favorite books), Jeff MacGregor's Sunday Money, Donna Gaines' The Misfit's Manifesto and all of Laurie Notaro's essay collections. Obviously, I'm a little fond of this genre. As a writer, I'm drawn to it because I have a hard time writing fiction because I suck at lying. To me, writing fiction feels like lying. I work too hard to make it believable, so I wind up with cumbersome and sloppy writing that screams, "Damn! She's totally making this shit up."

I'm torn on the James Frey brouhaha. On the one hand, I do think it's bad to market a book as a memoir if a great deal of it is fabricated. Especially right now. I mean, good lord. As a society we are so hungry for stories that are "real". Slap the word "memoir" on something that's fiction, and it's nothing more than cashing in on the current obsession with constructed reality. If you're going to blatantly fictionalize, call it fiction. If the writing's good, it won't be a problem at all. The work will stand on its own.

With the works I listed above, most of them could pass for fiction. It's unrealistic to expect every single part of it to be 100% true. Hell, it's unrealistic to expect even half of it to be 100%. It's not necessarily malicious; time and memory play tricks. And really, the truth usually doesn't make for great reading. It's boring. So much gets omitted.

Even in the lowly blogosphere, there's a hell of a lot of omission. I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear about what time I woke up this morning, what socks I'm wearing, when I went to the bathroom, etc anymore than I want to write about that. But if something particularly interesting had happened - say I woke up at 5 AM and, while staggering to the bathroom, had a momentary panic when I saw the looming shadow of the Gateway Arch in my window, which led me to break into a dead run, causing me to slide across the bathroom tile due to my rather slippy angora socks, smashing my face into the edge of the bathtub and breaking a tooth. That, I think we'd all like to hear about (some people more than others).

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm prone to hyperbole. I enjoy writers who are likewise inclined. It makes for more interesting reading. If I wanted just the facts, I would have stayed in journalism school when I had the chance. But there's a line between hyperbole and dishonesty, too. I'm always amused when people take some of the outlandishness as truth. They tend to get really pissed.

I doubt that I'm alone in this, but I omit a lot of stuff on my blog to protect the privacy and dignity of people in my life. No, really. I do. Just this week, I did that. In all my angst I think a lot of you figured out that it was about more than what I mentioned. Of course it was about more. And, of course, I was well aware that it was about more. I made a conscious decision to not go into details because I didn't want to hurt the other person involved.

I've really struggled with this in writing the book. There are things I would like to include, that would maybe piece the narrative together, but in doing so, I know I'd hurt people I care about. As a writer I have a responsibility to be honest, but I also have a responsibility to the people in my life. I thought that would be a hard line to walk, but it's not. Not at all. My alligence lies with the people I love, even if it means my writing might not be as authentic as it could be.