The secret basement under a high school auditorium

When I was in a writing class last year, someone brought in this beautiful love story.

It was poetic, with long graceful sentences — the kind of thing I always secretly envy a little because I don’t write like that. It was a little Allende, that big intense lifelong love affair energy, you know what I mean? 

Anyway, the story started when the two of main characters were in high school, at a run of the mill public school in the Northeast.

When the class went to critique this story, almost everyone had one main hyper specific note.

One thing had stood out to everyone over and over again: why was there a basement where everyone in the high school hung out every day?

Totally unrealistic. Weird. Completely impossible. 

And, of course: the only thing in this beautiful high romance love story that the author had borrowed from real life.

— 

In that same class, another person, a gay guy who had been in high school in the 80s, was writing a mystery set at a high school. It was really dark but funny.

In that story there was another one of those details — almost everyone mentioned it. 

In a classroom scene, a high school biology teacher says in passing that men with multiple older brothers were more likely to be gay.

Everyone’s note: He said this in the 80s? Without demonstrating any homophobia? Totally unrealistic. Unlikely.

And of course: totally true.

It was a biographical element so specific that it had to be from real life. 

—

When Zoe read my book, there were a number of things they told me to cut because they were both too whimsical and too tedious. For example, an elaborate anecdote about a 4 year old who once lectured me + and some others about Frida Kahlo’s influence on the Mexican Communist movement while building sand castles on Pratt Beach.

I whined about all of the things Zoe told me to cut because they all happened in real life. 

(To be precise, they all happened in Rogers Park — one of the weirdest places both in Chicago and the world.)

“But these stories demonstrate the inconsistencies of queer community,”’ I whined.

“No they don’t,” Zoe said. “They make me think, this is all bullshit, H is making things up to be funny.” 

“But they really happened, “I said.

“That’s nice,” Zoe said.

“But guess what? It doesn’t feel like they did.”

—

So often we talk about writing authentically, getting the truth on to the page, as a noble and somewhat straightforward endeavor — the imperative to TELL THE TRUTH, Ernest Hemingway style.

But writing the “truth” — let alone writing the truth in a way that doesn’t bore or irritate everyone you know — is a far more ambiguous goal than writing advice blogs would have you believe.

Annalee Newitz, sci fi writer and tech reporter, summed this up well once on their podcast with Charlie Jane Anders, saying that as a reporter, so much of “the truth” can and should be condensed on the page.

Otherwise they would be writing pages about how their interview with an AI expert was delayed because no one gave them a guest key card, and then the stairs were locked, and then the elevator wasn’t working and… you get the idea.

— 

Sometimes when I’m way too into my head about writing the fine and often boring details of what ACTUALLY happened, I start thinking about my friends in election PR. 

I worked on a campaign with them once, and was in the room when they found out that the candidate had once been fired by NASA — not for sexist, racist reasons, but in a routine layoff. 

My friend was thrilled — to be fair, this a common response to hearing horrible things that have happened to your candidate in political spaces. 

“I’m going to get a statement going on this,” she said immediately. 

“But that’s not why she was fired,” I said. 

“Yeah, but we should say that she was.” My friend said.

“But that’s not true,” I said. 

She shrugged, already typing furiously.

“Yeah, but it’s emotionally true.” 

I wanted to object to this, but I didn’t, not really.

Because for our purposes — highlighting the ways in which Latinx women had been left out of STEM — it was true.

Or at least, it was emotionally true. 

—

The story I just told isn’t true, by the way — at least, the fine and boring details aren’t true (STEM, the organization, the candidate details). 

But it’s emotionally true.

And that’s maybe what it comes down to, with writing “the truth” — when the details are emotionally true, in spite of common misconception (it was actually fine to talk about homosexuality in high school biology, in some places at least) versus when those fine details might be literally true, but distracting from a bigger point (the casual high school basement hangout, a wildly precocious Roger Parks toddler).

When something is emotionally true, it’s not a distraction.

Otherwise — it’s gotta go.