Tuesday, March 26, 2024

A CURIOUS ANIMAL CALLED “AUTOFICTION”

 

Some months ago, a post about Autofiction popped into my feed. Here it is, for reference.

 

Succinctly defined, it’s an autobiographical story that is then fictionalized. In many ways all fiction draws from the writer’s life, but in autofiction the connection is much tighter. Call it fictionalized autobiography.

 

(As an aside, much in published autobiographies is also fictionalized, as the author attempts to justify, obfuscate, and shape their past reality— whether as an act to deceive or an act of self-deception.)

 

In other words, the lines are blurry at best. Maybe this is why I was unfamiliar with the notion of “autofiction.”

 

My published novel, The Voice of Thunder, was called by one reviewer “fictionalized autobiography.” Fair enough. It began as a short non-fiction memoire and morphed way off course into fiction. All my work draws from my life, even talking animal stories.

 

But just a couple of years ago I had the true experience of writing autofiction.

 

An injurious event I had lived, while deep into the Covid pandemic when the world had shut down and many suffered more real existential hardships, was the inexplicable and abrupt end of a seventeen-year friendship. My former friend just informed me she never wanted to hear from me again, no further explanation.

 

If you’ve had this happen to you, you know how injurious this is. But it was a first for me and I was ill prepared. In a time where social contacts were already strained by governments everywhere, this was especially hurtful.

 

I had a lot of time to mull over how I had gotten myself into this predicament, and how my judgment regarding this friendship had been so off mark. I was eager to take responsibility in every way I could, because I have power only over what is up to me.

 

Still under various degrees of quarantine, I had the time and the impetus to try and solve this mystery by--- yup, writing a fictional story about a friendship that turned out to be an illusion. Or was it a delusion? That was but one of the many questions.

 

The writing itself would reveal and also serve to heal.

 

After many revisions, I’ve started querying this story, which turned out to be much more fictional on the surface, as they all do. It’s a good story and its setting befits the world I write about, that of much younger readers in middle school.

 

But the theme still holds strong. Who is a friend? How do you know a friendship is true? What do we make of friends who behave like frenemies?  

 

So, before I knew the term autofiction, I wrote it. Now I also have the writerly word for it.

4 comments:

  1. Friendship is a topic worthy of much ink. I, too, have been gobsmacked whenever a friend disappointed, betrayed, or disappeared. Inexplicable. Hurtful. Confusing. I wrote about it in my journal, but never created stories. More power to you for doing so.

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  2. So interesting, Mirka. All of my stories begin with a real incident too, even with animal stories :) And writing is so therapeutic... I'm sorry about the lost friendship. I've experienced this a couple of times too, and it's so very painful because each friend has a piece of my heart. But better to love and to lose than not to love at all.

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  3. I'm so sorry about your lost friendship, Mirka. I know that was incredibly hurtful and am just thankful you could sort through it some by writing about it. I wasn't familiar with the term 'autofiction.' Thank you for introducing it to me.

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  4. Autofiction is succinct but I still prefer the traditional "autobiographical fiction." Longer but then I'm a traditionalist. Writing is the most wonderful way to deal with things both good and bad. I love it and love reading other people's stories, especially their autobiographical fiction hehe. Your story sounds so interesting.

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