Christian Bauman has an interesting column over at Identity Theory on the nature of truth in memoirs vs novels. Of course this is partly all fallout from the James Frey insanity, but Bauman also brings up Anthony Swofford who is having a few problems with Jarhead and how he (Bauman) was actually invited to turn his first novel into a memoir rather than leaving it fiction when he was trying to get an agent or editor interested. Bauman decided to leave it as is, but has not had the super sales that Swofford and Frey enjoyed which I guess means that Americans want to believe something is true, rather than just read a good story. And now that has come back to bite us on the butt, but Oprah is okay with it so I guess we all just have to adjust - nonfiction and fiction are merging in the publishing world it seems, and all too many people are happy to jump on the bandwagon if it means cash. (I can't believe that no one even fact checked the most basic things in Frey's book - like his arrest. It's amazing.)

Well, I have written a book. It is a book based on my experiences in Operations for a bush commuter in Fairbanks, AK. It is a book with a lot of flying, some dying, and a lot of thinking about just how much you should be willing to risk for your job. All of the flying is true - my husband has over 14,000 hours of flight time, almost all of it in AK, and he read and reread all of the flying to make sure that it was true. And then I had three friends who all flew in AK (and are still professional pilots) read it and make sure that they agreed it was true. So yes, we really did fly at 62 below zero, and yes, it was damn cold but the plane was fine. Anyway, I have been trying to get an agent or editor interested, and pretty much everyone thinks it's a great idea for a book, that the flying is amazing and on and on. But - then - they think that it should be nonfiction. They have asked me to change the names of the pilots (they are all fictionalized composites already) and call the whole thing nonfiction. They want it to be a memoir and if I will do that then they will talk to me. They will talk to me about publishing my book. They will talk to me!

Of course my husband will never talk to me again and neither will our friends, but that is beside the point, right?! The book could be published! It could be huge! If only - if only I will make it nonfiction.

If only.

So yeah, people think my book is great, but they want it to be something else. They want me to claim that all those conversations in the book that I have fabricated, twisted on their heads and turned upside down are true. They want me to swear that we felt a certain way about a certain incident on a certain day. They want me to tell you that what I think someone felt was really want that guy was feeling when even the guy whose story I stole for that literary moment can't remember what he felt that day anymore. It might be true - who knows. But when I wrote this book I didn't intend for it to be considered truth, I wasn't looking for truth. I just wanted to tell an honest story and sometimes that contains a true moment, but a true story - no. I can't swear to that and I can't write that.

So, here I sit with this book I wrote.

When I was writing Flying Cold (working title), I used Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried as a writing bible. I used it to show me how you can mix truth and fiction and make a book out of the combination. O'Brien is the master at this art, his Vietnam stories are such a mix that probably he is the only one who knows where truth ends and fiction begins. But he is also the one who calls it fiction, who insists on calling it fiction and he is the one who says you never know if anything is true or not.

It's safer to say you think so, to write it like it could be, to make it appear possible in every sense of the word, but always call it fiction. Basically, to tell the truth in my book, I had to call it fiction. That was the only way any pilot would be honest about flying with me, and the only way I could tell how it really was.

There are things you need to do as a writer, skills you have to acquire, a craft you need to develop. I have no interest however in becoming a liar. I wrote a story, a good story, a story about how it was for me once, how it was, mostly. My story is fiction. If you want to read it, let me know.