SiteYou Ask, We Answer: Do I have to expose myself?
Valeria asks: Life’s a funny thing. I’ve spent years thinking I really would rather work from home as a writer than go to my computing job and life has handed me a situation that may well take all my leave time and donated leave time to resolve. In short, I may lose my job! Crisis and opportunity all rolled into one. So, I’m going to start writing hard and fast while the child who needs me is sleeping and see where it gets me. As a graduate of Linda’s magazine-writer’s course, I’m full of optimism (and skill too).
My question is: I want to write about the problem occurring in my family for magazines that would find such a “real life” story interesting, but I don’t want to totally expose my child. Can I query in a “names and location changed to protect the real people” sort of way? For all the world I would not divulge identities but this is a compelling story that would help millions of parents and while I am planning many queries on the topics involved, a portrait of what actually has happened would, in my opinion, be very compelling.
I think the best way to approach this would be to pitch a service piece as opposed to an essay or reported essay…it may be easier to sell. In that case, you could write up your story briefly as the lede anecdote, changing whatever details you need to protect identities. If you get the assignment, you can tell the editor what you changed and why, and then ask her if it’s okay to run your anecdote with the changed details, or if she’d prefer you to find an anecdote from another person who doesn’t mind using their real information. As an alternative, you could do that right off the bat: Find someone else this has happened to and use their anecdote in the query, and mention in your credentials paragraph that you have personal experience in the topic to strengthen your query and your expertise. That way you don’t risk exposing your family members at all, but you still share important information with the magazine’s readers.
If you prefer to pitch the idea as an essay, real-life story, reported essay, etc., you could explain to the editor in the query that you prefer to change identifying details and go by a pen name. It’s been done before.
Have a question for the Renegade Writers? Send it to questions [at] therenegadewriter [dot] com. [[lf]
One Response to “You Ask, We Answer: Do I have to expose myself?”
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Justin
Said this on December 7th, 2007 at 12:13pm:I had the same dilemma not too long ago, even getting the pitch accepted before getting cold feet. I was worried that my daughter might hold it against us when she grew up, that writing about her situation while she was too young to have any say in the matter would ruin our relationship (and her self-esteem) in the future.
Strange thing is that we’ve written all about it in her blog and the article itself was pretty much going to be a reprint of one of those posts. Still, though, it seemed more concrete putting it in print… I can take the website down in 2 seconds, hard to do the same with a magazine.
And this part’s going to sound callous and greedy, but one of the deciding factors was the amount of money offered. Perhaps if that offered had another zero on it…
You’re absolutely right about sharing the story with others, though. Dozens of people who’ve read our daughter’s blog have written in to share similar stories, and that’s on a lowly little website nobody knows exists. If your story appeared in a national publication, there’s no telling how many lives you could affect.