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The Right to Write

Isabel Saunders

I’m currently faced with a moral dilemma which I’d like to throw open for discussion: to what extent is an author owner of her experience? To what extent does she have the right to publish incidents from real life?

I am not concerned here with possible libel claims, but simply with the degree to which I may morally make public my life, when doing so will potentially affect those around me. Let me explain:

In an attempt to improve my writing technique, I decided to take one of those correspondence courses you see advertised which guarantee to make you a successful writer or your money back. It’s very commercially oriented, as you can imagine, and insists on everyone trying their hand at all types of writing. The early stages concentrate on the easiest markets: whatever your personal inclinations may be, you are required to write letters to women’s magazines and the like. One of the suggestions for the current assignment is to write a ‘True Life’ story (personal experience, triumph over tragedy etc.) for such a magazine. I just can’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong: I have as many true life incidents as the next person, and think I am quite capable of dressing them up to a publishable standard. But what if my mother read it? Or my sister? The neighbours? Or my love-rat drug-peddling ex?

Realistically, this is partly a question of financial compensation: if they paid me enough (quantity undefined - if anyone’s interested, they can make me an offer and see if I go for it) I’d probably pose naked in Trafalgar Square, but for £50 or £100 you’ll have difficulty getting my clean linen washed in public, let alone the rest of it.

It’s also partly a question of how publication may affect other people. If I air my torrid past, I have to admit things to my family that they don’t know and don’t need to know. Yes, I can look for markets where they won’t see the article, but what if Mrs-Jones-next-door reads that magazine? It’d be worse if she were the one to tell my mother about my past. Worse still, perhaps, if she decided to keep quiet and only discuss it with the other neighbours.

There’s more than just the problem of the true-life, shock-horror type story, though. After all, it’s easy enough to say that if I haven’t told my mother I don’t need to tell the world. But what about the personal incidents that carry no shame but which touch on other people? Ever since Professor Bhaer told Jo March to write about what she knew (and perhaps long before that) there must have been books and articles published which have made the writer’s family cringe. Did Amy, Meg and the others really want the whole world to know about brave little Beth? Well, maybe they did, but then I was never sure theirs was a normal family.

When my brother died recently it affected my writing greatly. There are all sorts of personal anecdotes from my past that I would love to share with the world, at least in part as a tribute to him. Obviously, though, most of them are not my personal property; they are family memories. I’m the only aspiring writer, so am not stealing the material from under anyone else’s fingers but there is something which holds me back from trying to publish.

I’m not intending to report the negative memories - I don’t deny they exist, but I see no point in making them public. So, does it cheapen my brother’s memory if I tell the world I think he was a wonderful man who went through a lot of pain and suffering with the patience of a saint? I think not. Even so, I hesitate to put pen to paper or send manuscripts to publishers.

I write poetry, and have written several poems based on personal experience of my brother’s death and my reactions to it. These are very much things that I felt and feel, so I do think I should have the right to express them. But what if they open old wounds for other people? I don’t want to be seen to be trivialising his death just because I have managed to come to terms with it.

This whole question has been bothering me for quite a while, but has come to a head as I have been awarded a prize for a poem dedicated to my brother. I am thrilled by the prize, but my pleasure is tainted by the fact that I feel I ought to share the poem with my family and I’m not at all sure how they’ll react.

I’d be interested to know how other writers feel about this, and what problems they have experienced with writing about what (and who) they know.