This Angel on My Chest by Pietrzyk Leslie

Author:Pietrzyk, Leslie [Pietrzyk, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction, Literary, Contemporary, United States, American, Single Authors, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories, Short Stories & Anthologies
ISBN: 9780822981091
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2015-11-06T06:00:00+00:00

Good morning. What an honor for me to open the conference with the very first craft talk. Wow! This is totally that thing you dream about when you’re hunched on a ratty couch in your studio apartment, eating ramen noodles for the sixth day in a row, getting email rejections from literary journals you’ve never heard of, haha.

I chose as my topic the imperfection of memory, and before we dive into the examples of the text—which I hope you all read!—I want to talk for a minute about writing in general, sort of to set the tone for the rest of my lecture. I like to describe myself as a “writer of stories,” which means that even though I write memoir—real stories from my real life—I recognize that what I write is shaped and shifted by my mind. It’s not the absolute truth. The absolute truth doesn’t exist. We have only our own individual truths, and even though we might swear in a court of law on a Bible that we’re telling the absolute truth, we’re limited to telling only the truth we know.

One reason we can’t get to that absolute truth is because the act of telling the story changes the story. Once I write the words on the page, that’s when the truth changes from “what happened” to “what happened in the story.” “The story” exists separately, alongside the actual event. And “the story” is ultimately more powerful than the event itself. Yes.

Crazy, right? But human brains are hardwired for stories and narrative. On the handout, you’ll see links to recent studies in neuroscience about that, and a book I totally recommend, The Storytelling Animal. Very exciting stuff.

So while we want to remain true to our best memory of the events, once you write down that you were wearing a red dress, that red dress imprints on the mind, so much so that if you come across a photo and discover you were actually wearing a blue skirt and white blouse, you’ll resist. The story puts you in a red dress. The story is what you believe, not the photo. And the story—the act of telling—has transformed your blue skirt into a red dress.

Haha—I probably should have worn a red dress today! But I bet that if you were to think of this talk years from now—not that you have to, haha—it just may be that you’ll remember me in a red dress. And if you do, you’ll be proving my point exactly: story creates truth. Truth is powerless before the story.

And who tells stories? We do. Writers. That’s what we do. Create the truth, even when we’re making shit up. I love my job, I do!

Picasso said, “Art is the lie that tells the truth.” It’s where we create our lives—first by living them, and second by telling others what happened, writers do, yes, but even people making dinner conversation by talking about what happened today at their boring jobs. They’re shaping their lives via story; they’re turning their lives into art.

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