Inspired by comments.

[laurenthemself]

I was reading the comments on this entry about communication within systems, and I had a thought... just a vague one at this stage, but hey, I'll settle for vague, since I rarely have very solid thoughts.

I was thinking, because of the way multiplicity tends to be presented in the media (as a Bad Thing), and how integration is seen as the only way to 'cure' this 'disorder', and also that it's 'always' caused by abuse, what if people here wrote their own stories? I know some people wouldn't be able to manage a whole novel, but even short stories would be good, and maybe (it's a very long shot, I know) we could try and get our work published.

Even if you think this idea's crap, would you ever try writing the story of yourselves?

Comments

[shandra.livejournal.com]

This is a really personal reaction which I'm just sharing.

I'm very pro-anyone, multiple or not, writing or drawing or expressing in any way, so I think any project like that is a great idea on its own merits overall. Whether it's commercially viable is something else entirely.

For us as writers, it's not where we are right now in our fiction - we are finishing a novel with a multiplish central character (she's not selves-aware; one other person in her system does have a voice in the book) but we've handled it without ever introducing the concept 'out loud.'

I'm quite keen to see if I can get it published on its own merits and not in a - to be really harsh with my language for *my* book, not yours - a mental-health ghettoized book. There's some danger in that, for a writer - how people get pigeonholed as "a lesbian writer" and not "a writer who's lesbian."

After I win some prizes then I will write my truly grand multiple novel. *g*

I tend to think any fictional works by multiples will be informed by multiplicity anyway. My bias is that it's way better that they are good works than good explanations/insights into living multiple. Certainly they can be *both*. But maybe not by us, right now.

I'm not sure we would publish our own life story, at least not yet. One massive huge thing is it's not that interesting.

I think the only thing we get *directly* from being multiple is an increased tolerance for differences among us. But that hasn't, so far, led to much enlightenment about how to stop ethnic cleansing and bring about world peace, or even how to be a nicer person all the time... sigh. If it did then I'd write my life story! Or if I do something else worth writing about.

The other thing is it wouldn't be "my" life story, it would have to look like something along the lines of Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible or Franzen's The Corrections. (Both are IMHO excellent examples of multiple narrators.) But again, we'd need a good story to tell.