Blending Life Experience With Fiction

I don't know I have certainly thought about it, but I have an 8 year old daughter and my ex husband would love to know everything I have done to use it against me in custody. So I have not wrote my recovery story and my experience. I would love to but just like you I dont know how all the litigation works. Maybe you should talk to a lawyer or something.

WOW! Like you i am a very avid reader and i would like to one day publish my oen book and strat writing. It has always been a passion of mine for some time now. But in your situation, i think that it would make things a little bit rough. Being that you are dealing with family and not make believe characters. But i really dont see what the problem would be. I mean if these actual events happen in your life, then to me you should have a right to write about it.

Right now, I am in the same dilema as you. This is my New Year's project, do at least rough draft the novel. Creative non-fiction is tricky. You have to make each character unrecognizable, but yet you want to convey the facts as they happened in your particular story. Some writers do this very effectivly while others cannot. I hope I am in the first group. I have started writing, but it was too close to the truth. So I am now beginning character sketches, where I can tweek each character so no one recognizes themselves in my work. Then comes the outline, and then the writing. I wish you the best of luck. If you want a sounding board, I'd be glad to help.

You just change the names and many some circumstances; I am currently writing a book called "Tales from the Chair". I changed some names and circumstances. It's like they do on Law and Order or Dr. G, or the book "The Nanny Diaries". Following that should cover you.

This is really a pretty tough question. It would be quite tricky to write about real life situations even through character disguise. Family members that were involved in the situations would certainly realize that these were the experiences that they shared with you. Is it possible to discuss the situation with the family members involved to get their take on it? I recall reading a story about the woman (Grace Metallius I think) who wrote Peyton Place. The residents of the town that she lived in were certain that the book was about situations and people in that town. Essentially, she got ostracized. Are you willing to jeopardize the relationships with the family members (and those that are sympathetic to them) if they are offended? IMHO, there are a lot of questions that you have to answer for yourself before you go down this path.