On Fictionalizing My Truth

By Jade Melissande (Guest Blogger)

When I saw this week’s topic, I knew I had to write a guest post. The simple truth is, everything I write is autobiographical. Yes, the short stories I write and have published are called erotic “fiction” – and, strictly speaking, they are fiction – but at the core of every story is an actual, real-life event that happened to me.  If you look for it (and at times you don’t have to look very hard) you can find the real-life version of almost every story I have written right there in my blog.

I am mostly a sex and kink blogger that also writes a bit of short erotica. My blog is the explicit, genuine and very real account of my life as the kinky partner of two men.  Every time I write there I share the details of my sex and kink life, as well as the intricacies of multi-partner relationship dynamics: the good, the bad, the ugly…the hot, the sexy, and the sweet.

And then I use those episodes to write my short erotica.

The events really did happen. The sex that she is having, I have had.

But at the same time, I am not the “she” in the story. She has hopes and dreams and a life that is not mine; motivations that have nothing to do with my own; feelings and reactions and realities that are hers and hers alone.

I like that word, “realities.” About a fictional character. But that really is the way it feels for me, when I start to create this “her” that isn’t me. When I begin to separate her from me, to flesh out her story, to make her not “me.” This is both the challenge and the joy in being a writer that uses my own life story as source material – to find that separation between her and I, between our experiences, to find what makes her uniquely herself, and not me. To write her reality.

It is a joy because I love to build a character’s life, to imagine a life that isn’t my own. I love the fantasy and solving the puzzle of who she is and why she does these things she does.  Who is she, why is she there, why-oh-why would she do this??  And it is a challenge because, since my own story is at the heart of this, I have to make sure she is unique, and that she isn’t me. Because as interesting as I find my own life, I know everyone else may not be as enamored of it, at least enough to read about me in every short story I write. So I have to make sure she has her own life and her own voice.

But this is why I write. To experience those joys and challenges. To find ways to explain and expound upon my own experiences, via these other women whose stories I tell.

Jade Melisande writes about her life as the partner of two kinky men in her blog, Pieces of Jade. She has published short erotica in numerous anthologies, both in print and online. For a complete list, please see her blog at http://piecesofjade.wordpress.com. 

Telling the Truth?

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

Stephen King

There is a heart of truth inside every piece of fiction I write. A living, breathing truth that beats and provides the literary life support to the story. It starts with an idea, an image, a moment of mental clarity and it evolves and mutates into... something else. An old silk scarf that is pulled through my hands before it's tossed in the donation bag becomes the method by which a character is bound to a chair. An angry, bitter conversation becomes a confrontation between characters, neither of whom resemble the real people who argued. And so it goes. 

That little nugget of truth thuds along-- cocooned in lies and spackled with other bits of truth-- and it becomes something that doesn't resemble anything from my life. Most of the time. There are things I have written and had published that hit close to home, but I think I'm the only one who flinches as I read something that is too true, too exposed-- because I am the only person I am willing to sacrifice on the altar of my craft. And even then, my exposed truths are rarely enough to incriminate me. I hope.

I have written things that were autobiographical, yes. How could I not? Of course, the temptation here is to joke about my sex life because, after all, much of what I write is erotic. But the most true parts of what I write are rarely sexual (I said rarely-- not never). They are the conversations that I have, the memories that linger, the experiences that most profoundly affect me. They are there, in my writing. But, but... they are often rendered in soft focus, much like a photograph taken with a smudge on the lens. You can make out the image, but perhaps not all of the people in the picture are clear-- or their expressions are blurred.

I don't use real names in my fiction, of course. Real people are there, though I doubt most of them would even recognize themselves. What I consider noteworthy-- the traits or situations that end up in my fiction-- are often insignificant to other people. Writers are cultural anthropologists and behavioral psychologists without the fancy degrees-- human behavior intrigues us and we use our people watching (and listening) habit to enrich our fiction. We borrow and steal from others, like crows stealing the shiny bits of your soul. 

When it comes to writing fiction, I don't have a hard and fast rule about writing about real experiences or real people. I take it on a case by case basis. I have intentions to write a memoir some day and I know I will have to expose more of myself (and others) than I have in my fiction. There will be no "Fiction/Erotica" label on the spine to deflect readers from thinking certain things about me and that leaves others vulnerable as well. How to approach it? Do I ask permission first or write my story and ask forgiveness later? I don't know. I will have to figure it out as I go. 

Professional Liar

By Lisabet Sarai

Breathe... Moist, ripe, heavy, laced with the scents of jasmine, garlic, diesel fuel, the tropical air was strange but welcome after the stale atmosphere of the airplane cabin. Kate O’Neill stepped off the jet way and filled her lungs gratefully. Even in business class, the twenty hour flight had been grueling. Kate ran her fingers through her tangled auburn curls and tried to smooth the wrinkles from her practical cotton skirt as she joined the crowds queuing at Immigration.

She felt a bit dazed. Only a month ago, she had answered the advertisement in the Boston Globe, and now here she was, half a world away, surrounded by foreign faces, buoyed by the musical rise and fall of Thai and a half-dozen other Asian languages.

Thus begins my first novel, Raw Silk – with a re-creation of my own sensory impressions from the first time I got off a plane in Bangkok. Actually, back then, in the nineteen eighties, there were no jet ways. I recall clambering down the steel steps and walking along the tarmack to the terminal, assaulted by the muggy heat even at eleven at night, breathing air that smelled as though I'd landed on another planet.

Like Kate, I'd come to Asia for a new job. I was easily as bewildered and overwhelmed as she by the vagaries of an alien culture. I used my own recollections to bring verisimilitude to Kate's experiences. But is Raw Silk autobiographical?

Yes, and no.

Threads of truth weave through the narrative fabric. The book could be viewed as a fictionalization of my own sexual explorations, especially my initiation into dominance and submission. I borrowed scenes, sexual activities, character traits, even specific items of dialogue from my interactions with my real world master. When he read the novel, he definitely picked up on at least some of my references.

Probably he would have been annoyed at my disclosures, if flattery hadn't won him over. After all, how many men have lovers who immortalize them in best selling (well... sort of) erotic novels? And anyway, my shy, nerdy, sensitive master is barely recognizable in the arrogant, crude, savagely sexy hero Gregory Marshall.

Unless you stop and listen to what the character says...

I'm a writer. That means I'm a professional liar. I take bits and pieces of reality and spin them into fantasy. My fiction abounds in people, situations, and settings drawn from my life and history. Although I might start with the truth, though, I leaven the facts with substantial portions of imagination. And I mix things up – locations, personality traits, sexual adventures – until I really don't need to worry much about the original subjects' complaints about my revelations.

Certainly I don't want to antagonize anyone from my past. However, the primary reason for embroidering upon the truth is simply that real life is rarely as interesting as fiction. I could write about that totally arousing visit to the Renaissance Faire – but in fact I didn't really end up with the bawdy wench and her swain, much as I would have liked to. That solo cross-country rail trip could have involved a quickie in the top bunk – but alas, things never progressed beyond flirting.

Many of my stories begin with actual experiences or relationships, and then spin off into the realm of fantasy when I start to ask “what if”. What if my master and I lived together? (We never have.) What if my mid-western boyfriend in grad school had been interested in BDSM? What if I found a Victorian diary detailing a society woman's sexual adventures? What if I'd met my master after decades of being married to someone else?

In fact, I've only written two or three stories that closely track real events, and even then, I manipulated the outcomes. And I find that as I've gained more writing experience, my tales have grown further from their autobiographical roots. Still, I do return again and again to a few primal scenes, the ones that touched me most deeply, telling the story from different perspectives, reliving the intensity through my characters.

I sometimes wonder whether readers can tell. Do the scenes closer to the “truth” somehow feel more real? Or am I as skilled a liar as I believe?

Let's try a quiz. (Of course this will only work for people who are somewhat familiar with my books...) Which of the following scenes from Raw Silk is mostly closely based on real life?

1. The infamous sex with chillis scene
2. The scene is which Kate masturbates with the knob from the end of her hotel bed
3. The scene in which Kate has sex on stage with a Thai go-go dancer
4. The scene in which Somtow pleasures Kate with a ripe mango
5. The scene in which Gregory sodomizes Kate for the first time.

Am I going to give you the answer? As I consider the list, I'm not sure I can. I know which of the items above I intended as the right selection, but when I review the others in my mind, I realize each one has a core of truth, even if I modified the background details.

In fact, the more I write, the harder I find it to distinguish between things that “really” happened and things that occurred only in my fiction. I know this may seem bizarre, but my most exotic sexual adventures took place decades ago. Looking back now, I find they have a dreamlike quality – not very different from the way I remember my stories. The imaginary settings in my novels feel as tangible and detailed as the places I've actually been – perhaps more so, because I had to observe them more closely in order to describe them for my readers.

At this point, truth and lies intertwine so intimately in my fiction that even I can't distinguish them. And I suppose that might be viewed as dangerous, to some.

But I've always lived my life more in my head than in my body. The products of my imagination have at least as much substance for me as the so-called real world. Dangerous or not, there's nothing I can do.