When does a story become my story too?

[SlipperTastic]

So I am about to start a blog, purely for fun and for mental health reasons.

Up until now my semi estranged mother has been my biggest rah rah rah supporter for me to get it started since the stories I have to tell are actually rather funny at times.

But, now that I have sent her the first entry which starts of with explaining how I became to be half from a different country i.e. How my parents met; she has turned around and said she does not want me to write about that at all.

I have been very complimentary about her in the sketch that I have written. Because it is a sketch in which my parents are more portrayed as cartoon characters - her as the innocent young beautiful model and my father with the throbbing red Jaguar E-Type with the registration number spelling out VULTURE in her language sporting a pornstar moustache.
Her version is obviously very different and includes years of heart ache and I do understand that.

But what she must understand is that my version also does exactly that. Her choices affected my life and it was the choices that she made after the divorce that caused our estrangement. So the fact that she did not bad mouth my father has no baring on that.

And the next chapter she will most definitely not like either then will she? Because that will be Husband number two and he really was a mean old bastard.
But once again my intent will be to skate over the bad bits and make light of it without exactly hiding the truth.

Who is she to edit my life? She already asked me to unfriend and break contact with a cousin because it linked back to her sister, and I did, no problem.

After the first two chapters she will disappear anyway. I left her and the country behind. And I very much doubt that anyone in her home country would ever bother reading a blog in English. I'm not that bloody clever!

So, my AIBU is this - am I being unfair to my mother to write a funny story about how she met my father when it led to divorce and made her very sad?

Oh and I said the car was Red - the car was apparently White, it only turned red later etc etc etc etc etc

the story of how they met is a fiction....as you werent there you have been told it ........I see why you want to write it if you are a writer but I'm not sure why you are doing it on a blog? and why you are sending it to your mum....if its just to stay private

• if you want to share it then just say its fiction... some writers are very open about the fact they are writing their view of their life others say everything is fiction....

Its probably more important you are honest with yourself about what it is you are doing with your writing It does sound as if your showing her was a bit passive aggressive/teenage -

your mum may not understand that a blog is private she may well think its open for anyone to read ( I would wonder as well as if its on the web its not really private)
or she may feel you have no empathy with her feeling crap about the events, that doesnt stop or trump your feelings/view of things.....you just have to decide how much you are bothered by that...

I wouldn't say just not write about it though.... this is your life and if it works for you then go for it ... just "own" it as the young people probably dont say these days...

I'm a ghostwriter so I deal with this all the time.

There is a line to be walked between owning your own story - for anyone - and what can be said about others. I write commercial, bestselling memoir for major publishers, so it is all legalled to the hilt, but the same rules apply if you want/seek a public audience - if it can be perceived as non-complimentary or an invasion of privacy at all, it has to be factual (witnesses who would sign a document to confirm, records, release forms, etc).

Just write a diary .

I think your mother’s issue is that she was encouraging to write your story but didn’t realise that, in your mind, that starts before you were born rather than your actual experiences.

To suddenly be confronted with your first entry must have been a shock. Unless you’d discussed that before, she hasn’t asked you to write about her. Maybe you need to clarify with her what it was that she was encouraging you to do?

And, if you do feel it’s an important part of the story, maybe there’s a way to weave it in to other ‘chapters’ with more subtlety? Narratives don’t have to start at the beginning.

onalongsabbatical William Faulker was an alcoholic who had loads of extra marital affairs - not sure I'd look to him as a moral arbiter in this.

Oh and the point of the blog is going to be a collection of stories from what has happened along the way up until now.

I have accidentally joined a fake football riot whilst DH abandoned me, I accidentally lied to the President of Peru in front of the International Press whilst my best friend the Punk Rocker did a curtsy in China just to mention two.

In most of the stories I have to tell I am the one being a monumental Pratt, and the point of it all is to show my self that I have lived my life bloody well and have had some really good laughs along the ways. And if strangers can maybe help me see that my life is not a pile of poop that is not a bad thing.

But yes. I hear you.

I will remain the only Pratt on the blog. As it should be!

Go ahead and blog about what you want to, just don't tell anyone in real life (even your DM) make it completely anonymous.

Oh and in my further defense I wrote a disclaimer at the beginning that what I was writing was a child version of the story retold through an adult lens and that my mother's version was very different

I write a blog and I have to be very careful what I put into it, if anyone features in it heavily I ask their permission, if they say no, I have to write something else. My family are very private (unlike me) also my DSS mum is also very cautious what she shares online and is very particular about him as is my partner, so while my son might get a mention under a nickname its rare I mention my DSS, but that is their choice.

You have to be careful what you write and share now.

I write about my experience and there are many other people within my story.

I write from my point of view, I make lighthearted comments about tragic things that have happened in my own life and I make jokes about myself, but I never do this with respect to anyone else.

I use pseudonyms for everyone and make their details unrecognisable, so they could never be linked and anyone who I actually want to write about my experiences with, even when I write positive and kind things, I ask if they are comfortable. I then send them a draft before publishing.

Overwhelmingly people have been touched, because I've written about how wonderful and important they were in moments they barely remember or didn't realise were so important.

I never characterise and I never appropriate someone else's story to be part of my own. I write about my experiences with them, but not about their private business i.e. anything where I wasn't literally there or part of it.

I do this and overwhelming tell the stories of other people, not myself, that is the theme of my writing. I write about how I was influenced by others and how they affected me. So if I can do this and tell the story of others without intruding, you can definitely write about yourself without intruding in personal aspects of another person's life.

I wouldn't appreciate being included as a cartoon character style, that diminished the value of my experiences and my own worth. So I wouldn't like that at all. I wouldn't like my private stories shared unless I specifically said Oh yes I'm fond of that story, include that.

With a story about your parent meeting, you weren't there when they met and most likely don't know the ins and outs of their relationship, including upsetting things and feelings that they may not have shared with you and don't want the story characterised or used.

There are other ways to write about your story without intruding on people who can been a part of it. You can write about your childhood and how you felt, but unless you never want to hear from someone again, you can't criticise or judge. Definitely I wouldn't appropriate.

I wouldn't want my experiences, of which another person only knows a tiny part of the emotions and complexities, written about by someone else in a way that wasn't the full truth or anything sad as entertainment. I definitely wouldn't expect to be written my personal life to be written about if I said I didn't like it and didn't want it shared.

Instead of the cartoon can't you just say I'm half × and half × ...do the readers really need to know the private details of your parents meeting in comic book form...if they are divorced then obviously there are wounds and you are reopening something they don't want airing...

That is not YOUR story, that is THEIR story...your story began when you were born ...

And why the heck do you need to talk about your mother's second husband... the blog is supposed to be about YOU, not a place to air your mother's private life...if I was your mother I'd be annoyed and upset too

Write about yourself, leave your mother out of it if she wants to be...not everyone wants their private life put online for the whole world to see and know, that would be humiliating and embarrassing,

If you have nothing to write about after you remove all the stories and cartoons featuring your mother...then maybe blogging isn't for you

If someone did that to me I'd feel completely betrayed.
Imagine if she or an ex-DP/DH did that to you - your stories, even your sex life, your pain or mental health made fun of for all to read how would you feel?

I would never do that to anyone. There are other things to write about.

Yup, I absolutely hear you. Though it is a good story in my eyes as it is how I came to be born, that is not the case for her.

And I agree. Not my story to tell.

The growing up on the island though? I was there for that?
Obviously I am not going to harp on about the Bastard, but there will be 3 or 4 sentences there to sum him up. Do you think that's ok?

And I may raise an eye brow at no electricity or water....

But flip me did we have some fun adventures as well.

LuMarie put it very well indeed.

Glad you have decided to rethink OP - it'll be better writing because of it.

Well the genre of autobiography wouldn't have really taken off if no-one wrote about their parents or childhood, would it?!

I know, shame how something that happened 50 years ago, condensed into two very short paragraphs could still cause her to feel this way.

I can only speak from personal experience of having a blog but I'm kind of from the "everything is copy" school of thought. There are ways of telling your story while keeping yourself and family members or friends anonymous or disguised - and unless you are explicitly telling someone else's story, never send it to anyone before you publish it! The quality of a blog relies on the writer's voice, which needs to be as honest as it's fair and possible to be.

Having said all that, as I write this I realise I've never written about my dad, who left when I was tiny - and I'd like to, but I won't, because I know my mum and stepdad read my blog, and I'd hate to upset them. So in conclusion: you'll have to judge for yourself!

No, even the three or four lines about him is not appropriate, you ha ent asked his permission to talk about him online , and from the name you address him by I imagine what you plan to write about him won't be good...

Just write about yourself...if you want to include anyone else, get their permission, and show them what you have written before you post it so they have the chance to say no...

I would be so annoyed if somebody did this to me, especially dragging up past marriages and slamming husband's...if the person didn't remove it I'd probably get a solicitors letter to make them remove it and take it down..

I think you have three choices:

1. Write it as you want and keep it completely private (on paper or on your own PC not the web)

2. Write it as fiction and change so many details it is no longer recognisable as her life (not just white car to red)

3. Wait till she dies. I suspect this is what most people do if they want to write about their childhood (unless they've already fallen out with their parents).

How would you feel if your mum started a blog about your childhood, all written through her own lens and changing the details she wanted to change?

Well I write about my life, a decade of experiences are in there, I don't focus at all of my childhood or parents.

The format is repetitive, I was born here, my parents blah blah blah... some of this is dull. Every childhood has many quirks, it doesn't make for an interesting read, unless it's a private diary of memories.

Also it is very subjective. Who really knows what was going on in a parents marriage, how many things do you know nothing of that happened during your childhood because you were both protected from them and not anywhere near old enough to notice.

Trying to tell a full story rather than just a few memories, noting "I remember once..." would be fiction.

For other people, as I said, no criticism, no judgement.

I write about wonderful people, I don't gush, but I write about what I witnessed and how I felt.

If there story has unpleasant behaviour in it, I phrase this again as either "I felt...", "I was left wondering..." or "I don't understand how someone could... but it's complex", more eloquently of course. I don't make the statement, "this is a bad person". I take responsibility for my feelings and responses to things that were said or done.

Also for telling story as therapy, oh my yes it is. However I found that being positive about difficult or traumatic things was the therapy. Or simply wondering about general things in a more abstract way i.e. what I was wondering about on a theme rather than taking an unpleasant event or person and throwing all that out and letting it dominate my story. Tragic events and bad people are not who I am and they do not define me. I am how I respond.

Complaining, focusing on bad or attacking others is not going to help me feel well.

I was initially a bit surprised though since she was so supportive at first.

When I mentioned to my dad way back when that I was toying with the idea of a blog he actually made a point of calling me back and telling me that I should feel free to write absolutely anything a wanted about him. And he harbors a lot of self guilt about how he treated my mother and how he let his two daughters down in the years that followed. But then he is a professional writer, and I stressed to him that it is not that kind of slagging of therapy blog.

The Bastard is dead and is a foreign man. He brought me up.

I agree completely with @ElderflowerWaterIsDelish

A few lines negatively summarising a character is again fictional, plus yes, any of my private life or comments on my experiences without my permission would be a "please delete that or I'll have to have someone make you delete it".

I also agree with @Blondewrites that, whilst a sweeping statement, the quality of writing depends on the writer's voice. One simple part of that is the character that comes through writing. I am authentic, I am generous with the importance of the wonderful things I have witnessed in others and I am truthful. However I am not unkind, or vengeful or judgemental. That reflects me.

I personally don't enjoy writing when the author's character seems unpleasant, entitled, complaining, superior, whatever. Some books and authors are that way and I feel it. I don't empathise with the author or really value their words as much as a character I felt was real yes, but self reflective rather than critical.

There are many ways to choose words for the same experience and it is not necessary to character bash when you write, never. As you develop your writing style hopefully you will find this voice.

This is interesting.
I started to write my autobiography last year.
I have now turned it into a novel by changing key facts about the 'characters'.
It would still be identifiable to those 'in the know' so i could only ever try to publish it anonymously.
I'd like to though.

Could you anonymise it OP so your Mother couldnt feel upset?
Then you could still blog/publish?