Jessica Lourey continues: “. . . whether it’s because we are too close to the trauma, don’t want to hurt or be hurt by those we’re writing about, or simply prefer the vehicle of fiction.” Students in my classes on writing memoir have in fact expressed these same concerns. The solution proposed in Rewrite Your Life is to simply write fiction instead of memoir. Writing fiction gives us more freedom, discretion and control. Novelists, she notes, have “both a shield and a microscope” (25). In other words, they have the freedom to protect their privacy and to examine their feelings.
Lourey, Jessica. Rewrite Your Life: Discover Your Truth Through the Healing Power of Fiction. Conari Press, 2017, p. 16.