Creative Writing Process
Writing and Editing “In the 24 Karat Cage”
Story Of My HeArt Pure Fiction Challenge
This is my response to the HeArt Pure Fiction Challenge by JA Vassili and KL Simmons!
My favorite fiction writing that I’ve posted on the Medium, a poem, is called “In the 24 Karat Cage”.
In its original form, this poem was meant as a scathing piece that began as an indictment of someone else. After editing, it evolved into an indictment of an earlier, dissociating version of myself.
As I edited this poem for publication with Prism & Pen, I was reading a Summary of Amy Tan’s Masterclass on Fiction, Memory, and Imagination. She said two things that significantly reshaped the poem that I submitted.
First, she said:
Fiction isn’t a bunch of lies, it’s one of the best ways to find truth.
This gave me the confidence to shift my story from an incomplete non-fiction into a more honest fiction piece. I couldn’t find a fuller truth to share, until I let go of the original, real world inspiration, digging instead into the fear lying beneath my instinct to poetically attack the original, closeted subject of my writing with harsh words.
Then, Amy Tan added:
…
When you write about other people, do it with compassion. If characters in your fictional story are drawing from people in your real life, write them with compassion, with the intention of trying to understand who they really are and why they did what they did. Don’t write for revenge. Not only is it not good for your writing, you could risk a lawsuit.
The original poem was non-fiction shrouded in words that so thoroughly and carefully hid the identity of the subject, that I know they wouldn’t recognize themself, had they read it. Though this wasn’t really revenge, as this person couldn’t be harmed by words no one but me could possibly attach to them, it was a way of selfishly venting that made the poem unfit for an audience outside of the draft folder.
As I thought about this, it still didn’t feel like compassion. Writing compassionately isn’t just done to avoid a lawsuit. In fact, sometimes writing compassionately could actually invite a lawsuit, but that’s another subject altogether. A truth can carry consequences that are every bit as serious as those of a falsehood. In this case, I was searching for a truth from within, so the vulnerability was more internal, as I opted to share my story publicly.
The spirit of compassion in writing goes deeper than a fear of consequences.
It’s offered as a service to truth. It’s offered because a two-dimensional villain is simply a poorly written villain. We’re always here to share a truth, even in fiction. A truth must be viewed from every angle to really be seen. This truth needed to be internalized to be fully fleshed out. I needed to become the once closeted villain of my own poem to really see the subject of my writing and build the most complete truth that I could share with my audience.
When I edited, I only changed a handful of words, but that changed everything about how I viewed my story.
The villain was no longer someone else. I was no longer the accuser. I was no longer the one offering pity. You, the reader, took my place in my own story. I invited you to see me through my own eyes. I was the villain, struggling to find my way closer to a truth, a villain sorting through the perspective and the pain to find a way to be safely seen.
Just a handful of words can be the difference between an unflattering portrait of another and a more honest self portrait, frozen in time.
In the obfuscation of imagery and metaphors representing real and imaginary events, the reader may or may not understand these nuances found in carefully selected pronouns, but I can now share this story, told inside a poem, with the confidence that I have told my story with as much compassion and truth, as I can offer to both myself and my subject.
Update:
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