Publish and be damned

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I am now retired, have AS, and have been thinking of fictionalising some aspects of my earlier life for possible serialisation in a certain provincial newspaper.

But what do I do about my significant other, an NT to her bootstraps?

By her standards, my earlier behaviour – the bits I want to use as a base for my fiction - was wrong.

My behaviour possibly occurred partly because of my AS. I am naïve, a slow learner, and throughout the period in which my story would be set I was also lacking in social skills. Typical AS.

Getting back to my S.O., there is already a lack of anything deeply meaningful between us. We co-exist mostly because we have to. Our financial situation dictates it.

My as yet unwritten story finished twenty-five years before I met her.

What I want to write about would be based on the ten years that I was involved with a woman married to someone else. She incidentally is now deceased.

I’ll possibly be in deep excrement when the present significant other reads my story. I already know she disapproves of what we did, but it is never discussed.

So do I forget about the one writing topic for which I truly have some passion, just to keep the peace at home, or do I say to hell with her? I really don’t know what to do.

Don’t say that it may never happen, that for example my writing may not be good enough to be accepted by the newspaper; I know how to write publishable fiction.

And please don’t suggest seeking publication somewhere where she won’t see it. That’s not an option.

I guess you've got three options:

Don't publish (doesn't stop you from writing)
Publish something else
Tell your significant other what happened before you publish.

Letting her find out by reading the book is definitely a bad way to let her find out! But I guess technically that is a fourth option.

However, letting her find out at all may cause problems. Then again, so would not publishing your book. (Assuming you can publish it--there are often more factors than just quality involved, such as reader demand or book length.)

Quick method for making decisions:

1. Write down the pros and cons of each decision.
2. Give each pro and con a number that says how important it is. If it's a possible outcome not certain to happen, then reduce that number by how unlikely it is.
3. Add up the pros of one decision and the cons of all the others. Repeat for each decision. The number that's the highest should represent your optimal choice.

If it's fiction, do you have to tell your significant other that it's based on real life? Or will she just know by reading it?

You say you already know she disapproves, but it's never discussed. Does she know what happened? If so, why should she care if you base a fictional story off it?

I don't know what you should do. Nobody else can tell you how much you value writing this story against having a peaceful home life.

I'm assuming by your post that your significant other knows about what happened between you and this other person for 10 years in saying what i'm going to say. Whether your significant other approves or disapproves of what happened between you and this other person seems irrelevant to me because it's the past. No one is perfect and people make mistakes, so whether what happened between the two of you was right or wrong, it shouldn't stop you from writing about it and I don't think that anyone else really has the right to try and stop you from writing it. I can't really say what you should do if publishing it will cause real problems in your home life, but what SHOULD matter is what makes you happy, and to be honest, from the little information you've given us, it doesn't sound like your current home life is so happy to begin with (correct me if I"m wrong), or it doesn't fit into what my idea of a happy home life is. If it were up to me I would say write on, my friend, but i don't know if anyone can really give you the answer to this dilemma.

That's why I'm not coupled. I was never able to repress my self-development for the sake of keeping in the closet some ghosts that a significant other would rather we pretended are not there.

Can you publish under an alias?

Also, there's a big difference between fiction based on a true story and creative nonfiction. I think if you were to focus it more on fiction rather than the true story, you should be okay.

I really don't know any advice to give you without knowing any details like if the overall message is going to be positive and what have you. I really wouldn't post it on here if I were you because you don't want to see it published before you got to write it by someone else. I personally hate that concept that you can't trust people with your ideas because I have so many good children book ideas, and I want to talk about it with people to see if they are good or if its just in my mind, but I'm so scared someone else will do it first since I procrastinate. Ideas are not really yours. It's what you do with them that matters. At least that's my take on how I see people function.

As far as advice on the ultimatum concept. You are going to have to decide which is more important to you in your life, and which is more important to you beyond this life (after death). I kinda think you portrayed that your writing is very important, and that your current situation is not as much as it's just how it is rather than where you want to be. You also seemed a little concern about your ex friend's husband from way back when. If you are positive people will associate your story to your past, understand they will also associate it to her past (not your woman now, the married one from way back when). If she is deceased, she obviously can't tell you her opinion. if I were you, I would ask myself the following questions:

Is what I'm writing something that would upset her, the previously married woman?

How would she feel about her widowed husband's feelings regarding this situation?

How would she feel about my decisions?

Would any reader besides those emotionally involved take this as a sign of disrespect to those who passed away? Would the readers associate any negative emotions to this story and my byline? Does it really matter to me what they think?


As far as advice on your current living situation. Set some long term goals. Where do you want to be in 3 years? On your own? What do you have to do to get there? And then just do it.

Also, can you not seek publication elsewhere? or is there just no place to publish where your current woman can see it? The reason I ask is if you are capable of publishing elsewhere, then consider it. You may not want local personal history in your local paper. That stuff is great for grocery store novels, certain magazines, etc. Maybe you may decide to write about something else for the local paper, something current and equally controversial perhaps, but also work to publish what you are passionate about elsewhere.

Also consider two things. Return on Investment. Opportunity cost.
Return on Investment doesn't have to be monetary, though that should be highly considered. But think of all the costs you will put in your story. Your time. Your reputation. Your relationships. Then compare it to what you would get that you want out of writing the story. Possibly money. A by line. Something published for your resume. Possibly an agent for future writing endeavors. Etc. Then decide from your list of things you could get out of it that you want which ones are Possible, and which ones are Probable. Compare the cost versus the Possibles and then again versus the Probables, and then you can safely assess what type of risk you are dealing with as well as get a good perspective on whether or not this project would be worth it.

Your opportunity cost is what could you be doing with your time you put into this project, and what else could be done with your story. For instance, if you have a job and will have to cut into your hours of work to negotiate with the newspaper, your opportunity cost would be the lost pay. Another thing, if you think you can write this story in a way where it can become a novel, would you lose that opportunity to put it into a novel by publishing it in the paper? In other words, what opportunities are you and could you be missing out on with this endeavor? Again, classify the list as Possible and Probable.

I really hope you find your way. Best of luck to you.

This is an interesting little situation for you. I am also writing a book---sci-fi/horror. I am using a character in it that has AS. But this character is only loosely based on me. However, I am considering publishing under an alias. Have you thought of that? Tantybi suggested that earlier. Good luck MarchHare---and I think Tantybi's suggestion of an alias is a good option.

Writers should not censor themselves otherwise what is the point of only telling part of the story.

That's true garyww. Only telling part of the story does take the "air" out of it. My novel is different from MarchHare's true story in the respect that mine is sci-fi/horror (fiction). But MarchHare should consider carefully how to publish this.

I think that writers, like teachers, have a responsibility to society and to themselves to be 100% honest even if it might hurt. That is a bit of the price one has to be willing to pay. Of course we'll never know for sure whether writers actually are honest but I suppose we can estimate how many people they have hurt by the content of their material and make some estimates from there.

Should it matter what one thinks?
This is about you.