Realistic and true life experience stories?

I have been thinking about writing maybe a compilation about life experiences. I was wondering if someone here maybe had an idea how to go about that?

They are not necessarily erotic or even that uncommon.
Any suggestions of stories/authors who deal with those type of stories?

I have just published something like that that in the mainstream, with what I called a "memory book" rather than a memoir, put together as an example for workshops in encouraging people to write up and combine vignettes from their lives and family history to pass on to generations that follow them. Over the years, I've put short stories, poems, and essays into competitions that came directly out of my family history and experiences. Put together (some sixty of them), they illuminate my public life and that of my parents and a grandparent--I've lost most of who the other grandparents were, at least in story form. You could do this the same way--not a comprehensive chronology but as representative vignettes in various forms. The book very purposely notes that it doesn't come out of fame but concentrates on family stories that would be important to the family.

It begins with a quote from Madeleine L'Engle:

"If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are."

My mother self published a collection of short stories just before she died, with pieces from her childhood in England, some of her experiences as a teenager during the Second World War, being courted by my father shortly after, teaching, children, life, death. She joined a writing group - as Pilot suggests - which gave her access to readers and willing editors. She just wrote, found someone who formatted it for an eBook, had a friend digitise photographs from the family album, did a print run of about 200.

Exactly as Pilot said, write it before it's lost. My father was a social historian specialising in the 18th and early 19th century - his best source material was always family diaries, shopping lists, minutes from workers club meetings, that kind of thing. Trivial to many, but the best record of how the ordinary, every day people lived.

It is especially important now, I think, in this digital age where everything becomes so ephemeral, to physically print it, make a book. Because then it lasts. I have photos in albums going back fifty odd years (and my mother's went back eighty years) where you can take a image in your hand, turn it over, and find a date or a place, written in pencil or a pen with blue ink, and it's real.

But be careful. There is danger in the past.

My mother never knew her father. Her mother refused to talk about him. I asked my grandmother the name of the father, and she said she couldn't remember. We all believed my mother was a love child.

Not true. My grandmother and 'grandfather' were married in 1929. I have the official record, and interviewed a bridesmaid before she died. She had nothing alarming to report about the grandfather. He died young. Acute indigestion. He was a mechanic.

The real love child was my aunt. Grandma got pregnant with her before she divorced my grandfather and married the new husband. I found the divorce and marriage records. My aunt was and is unhappy about what I uncovered. She got me cut out of my grandmother's will.

But I located a cousin, and she sent me several photos of our grandfather, and some of his ancestors. I then found all of the ancestors of that branch back into the 1700s.

My current storyline "A Slut's Triangle" is basically that type of experimentation. I like to think of it as a sort of autobiography sandwiched inside an erotic storyline. I used much of my life experiences, my real world name, elements about my divorce, my thoughts, things and people from my past, etc. I have told people here that if they really want to know more about me as a person beyond my profile, "A Slut's Triangle" would tell them a great deal more; all they have to do is visualize the main character "Ashleigh" as me.

I did an embellished (mostly just remembering the good stuff and remembering it as particularly good) memoir-like book a few years ago of my erotic, nonpublic side. It was published under the title Flying High, Diving Deep, and includes quite a few of the stories I have posted here at Lit. Quite a few of my stories flow from scenarios and emotions of that side of my life. So, you can even sectionalize your life when writing about it.

My stories are often based on others' lives as well as my own. No matter the basis, I add my own experiences, fantasies, and speculations. Do they tell my life story? Oh, I hope not! Do they reflect my personality and preferences? Maybe. "Views expressed are not necessarily the author's." Are they all a part of me? Undoubtedly.

But I mix together what did happen, what could and should and should not have happened, what I wanted to happen or not happen, et fucking cetera. Straight reporting of my life would be quite tedious. I write memoirs but keep them to myself, to remind me of my foolishness. Y'all don't need to know what an idiot I've been.

That's my life story, a sequence of fuckups and lucky accidents.

Hardest time

I have the hardest time writing about real life experiences. I've had some really hot experiences but...I just can't write about them.

most of my stories, the girls are based on real girls I've known or been with, even the names are names and some of the situations are out of actual situations.

But when it comes down to it, I just can't write about my real life experiences. They always become poorly written.

Most of our True Lives don't meet the standard for LIT stories. Those that do still need some editing and embellishment. Reality is much more capricious than a good fiction.

Hypoxia said:

Most of our True Lives don't meet the standard for LIT stories. Those that do still need some editing and embellishment. Reality is much more capricious than a good fiction.

Click to expand...

I agree that it has to be embellished--or at least filter out a lot of the not sexy inevitably involved (there's usually some nasty prep required)--but a lot of the boost can be given in emphasizing the emotions involved, and the emotions could have been quite genuine.

I have the "My Life" series, which seems to do well without too much sex involved. I would say if you want to publish here though you should add an explicit sex scene. I don't find that too hard to do as sex is just part of life.

I would also say that you can really build tension in a story with emotion from a first person perspective and not much has to actually happen. The writer takes control of the reader's perspective and either draws it out, focuses it or condenses and indicates that "this part isn't really that important" based on the writing. Something like:

I totally just fucked a guy I met at the grocery store.

Vs.

I was checking out melons in the fruit isle when I felt someone watching me. I looked up and I caught my breath when I noticed a really handsome guy intently undressing me with his eyes. "God! I look terrible and I don't even have makeup on!" I thought to myself. Still, something in the way he looked at me made me feel desired and in return desirable. My heart started beating faster has he made his way toward me.

A great mentor of mine gave me the example of a lot of land published for a new house. You can look at it and describe what's there, some trash and weeds, maybe a used condom or two, or you can describe what you SEE, a future full of promise and drama. It is the writers role to guide that perception.

Wow thank you guys for all the replies, I am going to go through them now. I have a quite a few things, I would like to write about. I have just been hesitating because, I know if I added some fiction to it, it would be a lot more interesting.

If I did keep it true though, it would feel more intimate and accomplished. So I am not sure yet what to do, hopefully through one of your replies I might make up my mind.

Truth is often weirder than fiction, and also often more boring. Reality happens; fiction must bind to a narrative structure of some sort. Truth slams into us. Stories have a start, middle, and end, somehow. True confessions usually need to be punched-up, pinched-back, seriously edited and enhanced, like tending a garden -- we must fertilize, weed, water, debug, trim, etc. Letting it grow wild is usually unattractive.