Chapter 23 - Fiction is the Lie That Tells the Truth

Why I stopped writing fiction for more than a decade

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

I wrote a short story called Vocal. I released it as fiction but it was based on real events.

It’s basically a true account of what happened when I confronted my uncle who sexually abused me as a child.

It was written more than 20 years ago, soon after I first confronted him — as best as I could manage from memory.

At the time I was on a Writer Development Programme. We were meant to workshop our work every time we met so I took it to the group.

One person knew it was a true story but I presented it to the group as fiction.

It was fiction as far as I was concerned because even the truest and most accurate account you can manage is an embellishment the moment you set it into words.

History is fiction. Reality is fiction. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.

As Muriel Rukeyser said: “The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

I didn’t want sympathy from people or to talk about the real events that took place. I just wanted them to respond to it as a pie…