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Friday, June 7, 2013

What is that called, anyway?

So, I got an email from CampNaNoWriMo that they're "cleaning out the cabins" or whatever in anticipation of the July session. I groaned a little, thinking a number of things. Isn't this camp motif being taken a bit too far? (I, being the antisocial person I am, opted out of cabins) Isn't July too soon? Do I really want to do this again?

Then I thought, well, I could write my memoir, but fictionalized. I don't mean with like, added superpowers or anything; just filling in blanks and telling a story that isn't entirely mine, but with some of my details. I've actually had people (well, my grandmother) tell me that I've had an interesting life. I dunno. It's my life. Obviously I'm enamored of it, but that's not necessarily a commercially reliable thing. I like a lot of things that were not commercially successful, like     and the movie Push (which you should watch if you haven't).

Then I thought, wait, what the hell is that called? It's not properly a memoir. Nor is it properly a novel. There's the "autobiographical novel", which sounds all well and literary, but not really waht I'm talking about. Here's a list of Top 10 Infamous Fake Memoirs, but it's really kind of boring and doesn't really get juicy until #8 (A Million Little Pieces which, working at a library, I saw some of the fallout of that "reveal". Including a woman in her 70's who slide it across the counter with a disgraced moue, saying "I am so disappointed." I then had to read it, of course. So, lady, disappointed? In what, that he wasn't actually a degenerate junkie scumbag? This is another one of those books I'm a bit shocked and perhaps appalled that my grandmother has read, like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and #9 (Love and Consequences, which I had never heard of before and sounds hilarious). I actually keep waiting to hear that Dave Pelzer actually made all of his shit up. People steal A Child Called It all of the time, and I'm unclear as to why. Pointers? Rolling papers? It certainly isn't "inspirational", though I suppose perhaps it's intended to be.

But, I digress.

I'm coming up with my own name for "fictionalized memoir" or "autobiographical novel". And that, my friends, is "moirvel". Say it with me. It's a bit like "marvel", which every life is, of course (*cue the rising music*). I wondered about novoir, which sounded like it should have to do with noir, which my writing only has when I wrote some short stories for my coworker. Memnov sounds like a Russian chess player or perhaps nuclear scientist (or both!)

Nope. Moirvel. I'll make the tshirts if you want 'em. 


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