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My Truths are Stranger than Fiction

Our latest book club book is John Kennedy Toole’s The Neon Bible.  If the author’s name rings a bell it’s the guy who committed suicide at the age of 31 after he wrote one of my all-time favorite novels A Confederacy of Dunces.  Remember his mom shopped the book around and made it her mission in life to have the work published.  I believe he’s the only author to win the Pulitzer Prize posthumously.  His only other known work is The Neon Bible which he wrote when he was 16 years old.  And, yes, it’s good.  While I was reading it today, I flirted with the idea of writing fiction.  What a great concept to fabricate a story, then load it up with things that you know from your life or the people you’ve encountered.  Your main character can be loosely based on a best friend, an ex-boyfriend, a co-worker.  How fun!

One of the Brians I dated used to say, “My truths are stranger than fiction.”  I always come back to that because I think I know my story the best and only I can tell it.  Someone said “Tell your truth before someone tells it for you.”  

I went to happy hour with Daniel yesterday after work and he said now that I’ve found someone–mainly to keep my truth from getting back to Dean–to completely shut down my blog.  “You don’t want it leaking to Dean through a friend or someone who reads your blog or a savvy internet search.”  I frowned–mostly because I love my blog.  Not as much as Dean, but all the same, I love my blog.
I’m rushing out this post now before Dean walks in in a few minutes.  I told him I needed some time alone tonight to write.  I’ve never said anything about writing in a blog so I doubt he knows.
So maybe it’s time to shut down the blog, consolidate everything into a memoir, and write a book.  Because I do think I’ve found my happy ending.

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03.25.09

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Welcome to my site, derived from an advice column I wrote while getting my MBA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I give helpful, opinionated advice based on my own experience and from the expertise of my extensive network. For more, click here.

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