{"id":10268,"date":"2021-03-25T07:05:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T14:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=10268"},"modified":"2021-03-23T20:19:41","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T03:19:41","slug":"real-names-in-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/real-names-in-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Names in Memoir?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When writing memoir, the question often comes up, should you use real names?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no cookie-cutter answers. No one-size-fits-all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cBetween Two Kingdoms<\/a>\u201d Suleika Jaouad handled the situation by stating in the front of the book, \u201cTo preserve the anonymity of certain individuals, I modified identifying details and changed the following names, listed in alphabetical order: Dennis, Estelle, Jake, Joanie, Karen, Sean, and Will.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tara Westover, author of \u201cEducated<\/a>,\u201d changed the first name of her parents and siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phuc Tran, author of \u201cSigh, Gone: A Misfit\u2019s Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In<\/a>\u201d decided to keep \u201cthe real names of all adults and changed the names of minors not related to him and adult names he forgot. He said his \u2018tenuous\u2019 relationship with his parents meant he didn\u2019t care about their opinions and made his book easier to write, noting, \u2018I wrote without worrying about trying to preserve the relationship, and wasn\u2019t sure if they\u2019d read it. I felt unencumbered and free to be incredibly truthful.\u2019\u201d \u2014March\/April 2021 Writer\u2019s Digest magazine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Write whatever you want to write. Later, if you publish your memoir, you can decide what to do about names. But before that, free yourself to write your truth. Write your story without worries about what anyone else might think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell what happened. Write Your Story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just Write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When writing memoir, the question often comes up, should you use real names? There are no cookie-cutter answers. No one-size-fits-all. In \u201cBetween Two Kingdoms\u201d Suleika Jaouad handled the situation by stating in the front of the book, \u201cTo preserve the anonymity of certain individuals, I modified identifying details and changed the following names, listed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[1537,1404,1536,1538,1190],"class_list":["post-10268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-phuc-tran","tag-suleika-jaouad","tag-tara-westover","tag-write-memoir","tag-writing-freely-just-write-writing-prompts-the-write-spot-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2FC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10268"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10272,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10268\/revisions\/10272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}