The Heart's Own Math

The challenge of writing fiction based on real people's lives.

I have more than 50 drafts tucked away here on Substack—some of them half finished, some just a few lines of notes. I thought I’d be finishing “Don Quixote at the Market” this week, but today I woke up with a more urgent W.I.P. on my mind: a true refugee story that I’ve been struggling to tell in the form of fiction. The people who lived this journey want you to know it, and I want badly to share it on their behalf, but I’ve been having a hard time fictionalizing it. Today brought some clues about why.

First, synchronicity—an angel in the algorithm—winged me while I was still in bed. After feeding Marcel and Ani their breakfast, I crawled back under the covers to catch up with some of the many excellent newsletters I subscribe to. In my inbox was a fascinating post by Kate Jones of A Narrative of Their Own: Can You Ever Forgive Me? The remarkable story of Lee Israel.

Lee Israel was a struggling biographer turned forger of literary letters. Strapped for cash, she sold two authentic, signed letters to pay her cat’s vet bills. (I’m not unsympathetic.) Having discovered a market, she then started fabricating letters by famous people, typing them on vintage typewriters, and forging the signatures. Eventually, the FBI came knocking, and that was the end of her literary crime spree. Unrepentant, Israel later sold a memoir about her exploits, even boasting that her made-up Dorothy Parker was wittier than the real one. That sort of thing goes beyond chutzpah into sociopathy. How could anyone lie like that and feel good about it?

Then it hit me: being a lousy liar is exactly my problem. I’m struggling with a story based on real people’s lives because there’s life and there’s fiction, and blurring the line makes me feel anxious.

Thanks to my brother Rick, who sent the device, I’ve been experimenting with the HeartMath biofeedback app. The keys to achieving a steady, calm heartbeat are to breathe slowly in and out from the heart and think of something warm and pleasant (in my case, snuggling a cat). With a visual representation of the rhythm, it’s easy to see how quickly an anxious, distracted thought throws the rhythm out of “coherence.” I know my heartbeat would blip way the heck out of whack if I said something false and passed it off as true. But what’s “true”?

In her essay “The Not-So-Deadly Sin” in the collection High Tide in Tucson, novelist Barbara Kingsolver expresses her dismay at readers who are sure her characters must be based on her and her family. Nope, she insists, I made them all up. Really. But then something dawns on her: in her book jacket photos, she doesn’t look like a liar.

Whether or not we are perfectly honest in adulthood, we should be, and we know that on a visceral level. So visceral, in fact, a machine measuring heart rate and palm perspiration can fairly reliably detect a lie. We don’t even have to think about it. Our hearts know. —Barbara Kingsolver

Of course, writing fiction isn’t lying; it’s invention. Given the right frame, I can happily make stuff up all day long. Spinning a yarn is partly craft—planning, plotting, revising—but at its most satisfying, fictional storytelling feels like taking dictation from imaginary friends. They develop their own integrity and agency, and then they surprise and move you. Ultimately, if you’re lucky, they end up embodying some theme your heart’s been holding close, some truth you didn’t know you had to tell.

But locating my friends in one place when they come from another? Recasting their appearances, backgrounds, and families as well as the events of their heart-pounding journey? Being vague isn’t an option, but I’m afraid I’ll change the wrong detail and invalidate some essential truth. My heart rate blips just from thinking about it.

Nevertheless, it’s necessary to write this story as fiction because the stakes are also real. This family may never be entirely safe from the monsters who targeted them back home, and despite having done everything the “right way” to be here legally, their asylum applications are still in process. So it’s necessary to “lie the truth”: not just replace a few details but write an inspired story with the same essential truths at its heart.

A. referred me to the film The Covenant, which tells a fictional tale based on the real risks taken by Afghan interpreters working for the U.S. and the efforts of American soldiers to honor their country’s promise to bring them to safety. It’s a powerful and gripping film, but I couldn’t help but notice that the interpreter’s wife appears only briefly and is literally in the shadows. This was the movie script writers’ choice. For that matter, even nonfiction always involves a choice of perspectives, one that may be full or fractured, honest or dishonest. In The Safety Net—working title—as in real life, the man and woman have different but equally important strengths; they saved each other back then, and they save each other every day. So one thing I’m certain of is that this story will honor both their points of view.

I’m still not sure what final form the story will take, but now I think if I keep putting in the work and breathing from the heart, it will begin to tell itself in its own authentic way. Hope you don’t mind if I share an occasional update.

Happy Valentine’s Day.