Booksology “(Most of)before you wake up“This is inspired by real events and dreams in my life. It speaks to a different kind of truth,” Glock said in an email.
She was also able to draw on her own experiences to convey Alicia’s feelings of loneliness.
“When I reflected on my work, I realized that I often talked about isolation and connection. Maybe it’s because I grew up moving from place to place, but I’ve always felt like an outsider, someone who exists between clearly defined groups and worlds. I also think that the struggle between connection and isolation is a typical adolescent, a liminal in-between state.”
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Glock explored parts of her own life story in nonfiction passportabout how she grew up moving around Central America because, as she eventually realized, her parents were CIA agents. This book presented a much different and much more difficult challenge for Glock. before you wake up did.
“For me, creating a coherent story from the messy complexity of real life was much more difficult than creating a new story,” she says. “I wanted to be fair to everyone.” passport, Because when you talk about your own life, you’re also talking about the real lives of many other people, and the idea of ”impartiality” complicates writing. ”
There was also the problem of getting CIA approval before publication. As Glock discusses in the book’s author’s note, releasing some of her memories could jeopardize the safety of active agents. The book was reviewed by the CIA’s Publication Review Board to ensure that no important details were leaked.
The last hurdle is one that most writers don’t have to deal with, but they do need to decide what is best for expressing their feelings and ideas. Which is more rewarding: turning your experiences and hard-earned insights into a direct memoir, or turning them into a work of fiction where you can change the facts to suit your tastes and goals?
Obviously, that’s something every writer has to find out for themselves. For Glock, at least for now, fiction is her spiritual home.
“I’m sure I’ll tell more true stories from my life,” Glock says. “But I feel like I’m much more drawn to fiction now (…) There’s a lot more play and discovery in fiction. It’s more fun to feel unfettered. You can take a cultural metaphor or a cliché and lift it up and look down and flip it on its head or kick it a little bit and see what happens.”
After all, that’s why writers write. It’s a desperate need to see what happens. Whether you understand it through fiction or non-fiction is entirely up to you.
