ME MISTAKEN FOR A MURDERER

Author mistaken for fictional character

Before the publication of my first collection, when my short stories were published individually, I received an email from a reader in America. She had come across one of my short stories about a chauvinistic man who treated his new bride rather badly. The reader loved the writing but immediately assumed it was my life story. She was much distressed at my ill-treatment at the hands of my “son-of-bitch” husband. She said she herself was married to a wonderful, courteous, kind man who treated her well. Her comments made me furious that she imagined the incidents my personal experiences at the hands of a cruel husband. The story was not even written in the first person.

A few years later, at a reading, it was assumed the charming grand-mother in one of the stories was my grandmother. A listener commented how lucky I was to have such a wonderful grandmother. I had never known either of my grandparents, not from my mother’s side nor from my father’s side, and had not had close contact with someone else’s grandmother. This time I became mildly annoyed. I was a little amused too.

I am sure many writers are trapped in such boxes – readers assuming that the author tells his or her own story. That everything we write about comes directly from our own life experience. Observation and imagination seem to play no part at all. I could write a murder story and have the murderer not caught, and get myself arrested instead. Or have readers wonder why no one reported me. Am here still to write another short story.

Years have passed, and now I am the author of three published collections of short stories. I realize that this type of assumption and misunderstanding is a very good thing. My imagined fictitious work is so realistic, so too true to life that it is as good as a my life well told, the emotions and descriptions strong and clear beguiled the reader into feeling it personally. Flattered I must have experienced it to be so true to life, I couldn’t possibly just have imagined or plucked it out of nowhere.

A doubtful accolade!