Lately, a few of my clients have asked if a particular post were about them. It’s funny because I think I go out of my way not to write about my clients and to never write about any ongoing deals, like the seven-figure advance I’m brokering for the White House party crashers. And the film deal with Happy Madison. Ixnay on the etailsday.
I'm so vain.
What’s your experience writing about people you know? Any horror stories? I sometimes think fiction is worse, more room for projection.
Betsy Lerner 
Yes indeed.
Have you ever been written about?
That too have I, and it’s an eerie experience. No wonder people protest.
Here’s a quote from an article I wrote on the topic:
‘You can’t write things without the people you write about feeling betrayed.’… So why does it make us flinch to be written about? According to writer, Helen Garner, ‘it’s not so much the revelation of fact, as the feeling that somebody else is telling your story, and stating something without the justifying tone that you use yourself…You feel stripped and bare and you can’t say “Oh well that’s just me,” in that cosy way that one does.’
When someone writes about you, they use their own words, their own impressions. They look at you from the outside, whereas you can only see yourself from the inside.
I have blogged about people – in a past blogging life – to be told that this person actually looked into suing me for the blog content even though I never mentioned a name or, at that time, my own name! She discovered that she could not – that blogs are more or less off limits – and based on something I wrote about my deceased ex-husband – just for the record – you can sue on behalf of a dead person.
But it changed what and how I write online.
Too bad too. They were goooood stories.
You’re authors, you want to be authors, you want your book published and you complain that someone is writing about you? Hell, hope you don’t get a bad book review….thick skin, people, thick as an old alligator down in the black, dark swamp of Cajun country.
Well, does it count that I posted on my other blog about my partner wearing white socks with dress pants and shoes, and me not realizing until we sat down at the theater and he crossed his legs. I made him plant both feet on the floor and now do sock checks before we leave the house.
So, in a ranterly rant one fine day, after seeing someone wearing shorts down to their knees, and socks up to their knees – sorry, this bugs me for some reason – I did a lovely post about socks and included my partner in the post. Well, three months later he made a comment on my Facebook page about white socks and dress pants. Oooops! Who knew he read my blog?
Oh, well . . .
I write memoir and it hasn’t been a problem for me, knock wood. It helps, I suppose, that my parents are dead and I surround myself with people who are at least marginally willing to look at their own shit on a regular basis.
Although, actually, I do have one very sweet ex-boyfriend who was abjectly horrified when I told him that my next book was going to be an account (possibly fiction, which didn’t ease his mind) of the summer we lived with his notorious father and his father’s rock star patient. He told me flatly that he wasn’t comfortable with me writing about it. And what it taught me is that I should have kept my mouth shut until it was done.
My twin sister complains that I didn’t mention her ONCE in my memoir, although I did write about one of her friends in a slightly, ever-so writerly, snotty way — and he loved it.
A woman recently introduced herself to me as a “well known writer” from my old hometown and asked, “Am I in your book?” (As if I’d ever even heard of her before. ) Who does that??
My siblings are convinced I have stolen their story having told my own. What to do? What to do?
Speaking of your clients, Ms. Lerner, do you prefer that your clients and only you clients post here? If so, I will skidaddle.
All I can say is, she keeps emailing me, begging that I stop posting here. But I call her ‘Bets,’ so maybe the reason she hates me isn’t that I’m not a client.
I truly don’t get this, but people in my high school called me Bets and when anyone calls me Bets now, which is never, I feel immediately nostalgic and filled with love for that person.
Ha! Expect a dozen queries addressed to ‘Bets Lerner’ in the mail next week.
(I was gonna go with ‘Bitsy,’ but you seem more the ‘Bets’ type. Oh, and do people really call Binky Urban ‘Binky’? That kinda gives me the jimjams.)
CJ: Really? Can’t you feel the love tonight? I write this blog for you. I live for your comments. I prefer my clients write bestselling vampire thrillers, or offer their yacht off Capri in August.
if loving your blog is wrong, I don’t wanna be right
There’s also the opposite effect, particularly in fiction, where people don’t recognize themselves in your characters, no matter how closely you stole from their lives. It’s funny how people have no sense of their own quirks and habits.
In a interview Pat Conroy said his mother hides all letters and family memorabilia when he comes to visit.
Actually, it would be nice if someone felt moved to write about me.
In my first novel, a dear friend surmized that a main character was based on her. Her comment was, “I wish she wasn’t so trashy.”
I was shocked as the character was a true heroine. I was in love with that character. Amazing, people’s take on what you write.
I write The Napkin Dad Daily blog that starts with a drawing on a napkin under a quote. I then write a commentary on the quote.
I have (had) an online friend who I talked with frequently. She subscribed to my blog and loved the napkins. She would comment on them, thank me for the inspiration they were giving and forward them to all her family and friends regularly. She would often say that she felt like I was speaking directly to her in the commentary.
Then one day she asked me if a particular napkin and commentary was referring to something she had told me about her marriage. It wasn’t referring to it and I told her so. About a week later she wrote me a very angry email saying she was very upset that I had taken our conversations and used them as material for my drawings and ideas. She was hurt and betrayed. I wrote back telling her that I had not referred to our conversations on purpose in any of my entries but that if our conversations made me think of something then perhaps it made its way into my ideas, which was an honest response.
I thought it was ironic that at one moment in time she felt I was directly speaking to her about issues she was facing and she was grateful, then in another moment I was stealing private conversations and feelings in an exploitive manner.
I didn’t feel like it really mattered what I said at that point because it wasn’t about what I had written, it was about her feelings and emotions about herself and her issues. We left it at that and she unsubscribed shortly thereafter.
It was very strange and it made me look back on my work to see if I had indeed done anything she was accusing me of. I determined I had done a respectful job of always abstracting out any ideas and issues I may have gotten from any specific events or conversations. I had even changed ‘family’ to ‘an old friend’ in some case, changed locations and dates when I experienced something to give some distance to it and not make people feel I was talking about one particular person or event.
I once wrote a story about how Planter’s was discontinuing their Cheez Ballz snacks and my mother thought it was a thinly-veiled attempt to blame her for her horrible parenting skills and for my lost childhood (paraphrased; her words, not mine). I shit you not. Cheez Ballz.
I read your blog pining away for mentions of me, subtle or overt. Hahaha. Though I’m not entirely joking.
Dave, Substitute “joking about” for “pining away” and you’ll be right on.