Please respond to my question:

Please respond to my question:

Is it unethical to write autobiographical fiction which goes into great detail about other people?

After failing with various writing attempts I am now halfway into a novel which is very easy to write, and an agent I submitted the first three chapters to (lying that I'd finished) said he'd like to express formal interest and see the rest, even accepting I hadn't quite finished.

Even so, I feel like I am setting myself up for humiliation because I am writing in great detail and honesty about my lack of social life, my family's breakdown, my lovelesness and so on. I mean some of it just absolutely cringeworthy, and there are few redeeming moments (e.g. meeting a girl, finding friends, discovering a sense of maturity, establishing a career etc). It's just one failure after another and I'm 26 now almost 27 so it's not as if it's a Bildungsroman. I started writing it as a writing exercise and found that writing truthfully about myself and experiences, failures etc seemed very natural. But I fear that I'm taking the easy route and basically admitting to everyone I'm a fucking creepy loser and that my book will barely be read even if it is somehow published and that it'll be from then on like a facebook profile filled with nude shots and embarrassing diary entries that I won't be able to defeat.

Please respond I am on the point of a fucking breakdown here.

If you want details I'll provide them.

Is it ever unethical to say the truth?

Countless people have done it.

Claim it's not autobiographical?
Publish under a pseudonym?

Come on user this is easy

I'm going beyond that by telling the truth in public about people who may not want that truth told.

Examples:

1. A girl I emailed in college despite never having talked to her who actually seemed interested in me

2. A girl who seemed to have a crush on me for months who I was too autistic and cowardly to talk to

3. My mother's depression and poor parenting skills

4. My father's spousal abuse and so forth

5. An old college roommate bringing a girl back to his room and her lying she was on her period because she was turned off by then

Just so much stuff like that. Am I simply giving in to the Social Media zeitgeist which compels people to make everything public?

>Is it unethical to write autobiographical fiction which goes into great detail about other people?

No. Joyce did it a lot and people tried suing him. Now he's been keeping the scholars in business for almost a century and nobody fucking cares about Oliver Gogarthy.

>basically admitting to everyone I'm a fucking creepy loser
People love extreme personalities. Look at R. Crumb. He founded his success on being a creep who likes porn. Also, being vulnerable and showing that youre just a regular guy is in vogue atm. Dont be scared (You can always claim that its made up anyway).

Not a justification. Plenty of people take Krokodil.

Even with a pseudonym it'll be traced back to me, plus the publishers know me already (and my style and biographical details) since I sperged out a few years ago when submitting something to them.

>Crush
>mother's depression and poor parenting skills
>father's spousal abuse

Nigga, this is the most basic material literally every artist has to work with.

>An old college roommate bringing a girl back to his room and her lying she was on her period because she was turned off by then
I swear i have read something like this in a Murakami novel

Yes but my family is close and I don't want to betray them by standing on a highway overpass with a banner that reads: "My Mom Was A Pretty Shitty Mother" because she doesn't have any friends and freaked out when she discovered her address was listed online etc. It feels like selling people out for shekels.

Then don't do it dude. It seems like you want us to tell you not too.

If you are two adults and somewhat reconciled, the prestige of becoming a published author should outweigh the shame of being outed as a bad mother.

If you value your relationship to your mother more than your life's dream, dont publish it.

“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”
― Czesław Miłosz

I don't mean to frighten you with the ominous quote. After all, everything is completely up to you. But the point being driven home is that some degree of 'betrayal of confidence' is almost a necessity. When you write, you reveal things about yourself, and since as the cliche goes no man is an island, you will likely reveal something about the people around you as well.

Lots of the little 'dramatic' situations people get into like the lying about the period shit no one will care about, and people actually find it flattering when those sorts of incidents are immortalised in a story, let alone a work of written fiction. But for larger threads like dysfunctional relationships and shit, yes people can get hurt. The most dramatic way for this to happen is completely straight, nonfictional autiobiography like Karl Ove Knausgaard's Min Kamp, where he pulls no punches, uses real names and distorts nearly nothing. That's an extreme example though. If you want to look at the worst, look at that.

People forgive writers for almost everything though. The writer makes a living confessing his worst sins and the public praises him for it.

“It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body!”
― Thomas Mann

The thing is that I have a very detailed memory, and also a strong instinct to belittle myself whenever I can. The result is that I can very easily recall embarrassing things easily. I read a book called Mars by Fritz Zorn that was rec'd here recently and although I enjoyed it because of how brutal he was with himself, I also realize that he could never have written a novel after that or stated anything seriously (political opinion, sociological critique) without someone saying "but dude you're a virgin failure nobody gives a fuck what you think" rather than someone like Knausgaard who was pretty much always an alpha dude with interesting stories despite the fact he couldn't maintain an erection, which looks like his biggest flaw amongst all the other alpha shit.

Thanks for the post also, very informative.

If you're worried, just change their names

But it'll be obvious who my mother is if I describe her as such. I can't say "Diane" or "the elderly female family member who had raised me but may or not, dear reader, be my mother"

Publish under a pseudonym, faggot.

>Is it unethical to write autobiographical fiction which goes into great detail about other people?
What does this have to do with the rest of your post? You seem to mainly be concerned about embarrassing yourself.

>I'm going beyond that by telling the truth in public about people who may not want that truth told.
Then submit it under a pen name change the names of the people involved so it can't be traced back to them.

> Am I simply giving in to the Social Media zeitgeist which compels people to make everything public?
No you're not, this sounds like something that's been building over the course of your life, a desire, a need almost to tell someone what has fucked up along the way.
Confession has been a part of society for millennia, it's not just a recent thing.

Yeah, I mean your family is a different story. You could still publish under a pseudonym

I am afraid of this in part, but if I write anything about myself it's bound to be embarrassing. I just don't want to let down the only person I have in my life, which is my mommy, or to seem like I'm selling out the people who have been good to me in life.

Knausgaard did change names, did change scenes. He's been sued. He's been ostracised from one half of his family. His wife had a breakdown. You should look more into the controversies. The books are good, but I lost a lot of respect for him when I started reading about it.

Ethical concerns are ridiculous here. A book is a conversation, and if you aren't willing to have these conversations with the people you're talking about, not willing to be vulnerable to their anger, then you're basically a coward talking behind their backs for a bit of validation and money.

Confront people and accept the confrontation with righteousness and you've got nothing to worry about, but doubt yourself and you deserve to be call weak and petty.

This is also a good frame for you story by the way, because everyone thinks out writing one of these - just ask any vanity press.

no

I agree with this user OP. Pseudonym it all and keep going, this seems important. Good luck.