Why write memoir as fiction?

I am often asked why I chose to write “A Dangerous Daughter” as fiction rather than as a memoir. These words by Jayne Tuttle, from Lee Kofman’s blog for writers, perfectly express my own feelings about why I chose to write two books based on truth as fiction not fact, not even creative non-fiction. From “The Ecstatic Truth in Creative Non-fiction:A Guest Post by Jayne Tuttle” published in Lee Kofman’s Blog for Writers: “My books are based around significant episodes in my life, but I am less interested in that than the sensations and ideas and questions they raise. So I take the true story, and try to tell it in as juste a way as I can. Meaning, I aim to communicate the feeling of this experience to my reader, not just recount the list of events. To do this, I shrink timelines, invent dialogue, play with detail and tone … I try to reconstruct the actual experience in as creative a way as I can, to fit the compact form of a book. A factual account would be a thousand pages, boring and indulgent.” — Read on leekofman.com.au/the-writer-laid-bare/the-ecstatic-truth-in-creative-nonfiction-a-guest-post-by-jayne-tuttle/

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Writerly Darwin

              Did you know that Darwin is a Mecca for writers, artists, and all souls creative? In my three months in the Top End, I have been published in the NT Writers Anthology, been shortlisted for a literary prize, participated in a left-of-centre Writers’ Group called ‘Write Now’, been invited to Government House for […]

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Steps to Success

I found this article called ‘How to Plan and Produce any Successful Project’ by Michael Sternfeld, in a magazine called ‘Living Now’. Here are the steps towards a successful musical production, which could equally apply to the huge task of producing a novel: 1. Carpe Diem – know when it’s the right place, right time 2. Know your core values […]

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More about Helen

“The most compelling thing I’ve read online recently is Helen Garner’s piece in The Monthly, ‘The insults of age’. Garner’s writing is always emotionally intelligent and always delivered with a clear-eyed grace, but this piece – her perspective on what it means to be a 71-year-old woman – is a particular gem. The cultural assumption that the ageing are almost-dead […]

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This House of Grief

Thoughts on Helen Garner’s latest book I’ve just finished reading ‘This House of Grief’, Garner’s latest non-fiction work. It was almost too painful to read at times, not only because of its ghastly subject matter, but also due to Helen’s signature style: holding nothing back, inviting the reader to share with her the horror of seeing a man accused, wrongly […]

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