{"id":164,"date":"2009-12-09T09:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-09T09:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html"},"modified":"2009-12-09T09:11:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-09T09:11:00","slug":"the-best-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html","title":{"rendered":"The Best Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had the chance to speak with two high school creative writing classes yesterday. I read portions of <i>Penelope Ayers<\/i> and they asked questions&#8211;How did you decide to make this story public? How many times did you rewrite the opening chapters? (And by the way, the answer there is somewhere between 30 and 50, I lost count) How long did it take? <\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The question I&#8217;ve thought about the most since then came at the end: &#8220;If you want to write a true story, but the real story isn&#8217;t the best version of the story, what do you do?&#8221; <\/p>\n<div><\/p>\n<div>I had already explained that memoir necessarily involves some compression of details. In <i>Penelope Ayers<\/i> the character &#8220;Susan,&#8221; for instance, is a combination of two real-life friends, and in the book we spend Christmas in New Orleans, whereas in real life we spent it in upstate New York. Upstate New York was irrelevant to the story, so I placed the scene in New Orleans instead. The story of our time together at Christmas is true, but my facts are wrong.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>With those caveats out there, however, I still believe, as I told this young man, &#8220;You make the real story the best version of the story.&#8221; You don&#8217;t embellish. You don&#8217;t add dramatic symbols to illustrate the point. You don&#8217;t tie up loose ends. You let the real story reflect real life, in its messiness and ambiguities and uncertainties. <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The real story is the best version of the story.  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had the chance to speak with two high school creative writing classes yesterday. I read portions of Penelope Ayers and they asked questions&#8211;How did you decide to make this story public? How many times did you rewrite the opening chapters? (And by the way, the answer there is somewhere between 30 and 50, I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Best Story - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Best Story - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I had the chance to speak with two high school creative writing classes yesterday. I read portions of Penelope Ayers and they asked questions&#8211;How did you decide to make this story public? How many times did you rewrite the opening chapters? 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I read portions of Penelope Ayers and they asked questions&#8211;How did you decide to make this story public? How many times did you rewrite the opening chapters? (And by the way, the answer there is somewhere between 30 and 50, I&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html","og_site_name":"Thin Places","article_published_time":"2009-12-09T09:11:00+00:00","author":"amyjuliabecker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html","name":"The Best Story - Thin Places","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-12-09T09:11:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-12-09T09:11:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/12\/the-best-story.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Best Story"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/","name":"Thin Places","description":"Amy Julia Becker on Faith, Family, and Disability","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/4dde10eee38770361dc9b46a9413776b","name":"amyjuliabecker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/222\/2222023dcae76abe6e896a3cf80e9836x96.jpg","caption":"amyjuliabecker"},"description":"Amy Julia Becker writes about theology, disability, family, and culture. Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}