Anna DeForest on Writing Without Artifice

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter— sign up here . Years ago, I took a test called the Sackheim-Gur, an assessment that measures a person’s tendency towards self-deception. I did already suspect there was something wrong with me, but I was young enough that the contours of the problem remained vague, showing up as a general failure to routinely perform the large and small tasks of daily living. I was young enough to not yet notice that most of my deficiencies came with reciprocal strengths. The Sackheim-Gur consists of twenty questions, mostly regarding subjects considered taboo or abject. For example: – Have you ever hated your parents? – Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements? – Have you ever been uncertain as to whether or not you were a homosexual? Subsequent studies show a negative correlation between Sackheim-Gur scores and the Beck Depression index, which indicates that lying to yourself is probably a necessary part of maintaining something like happiness. Of note, I scored near-perfect on the test, meaning I am a hateful deviant who relishes the pleasures of the body, and I won’t lie about it—at least not to myself. Storytellers are supposed to be liars; someone somewhere told me that. But I have never been one to tell stories, either. As a child growing up alongside many brothers, I did not like to stand out. When they would run from me (I was told to be a girl), I would run after until they beat me just to make me go away. But some early mornings I would be allowed in their shared bed, where the oldest of them would tell us his dreams, each thrilling and fantastic with through-lines and recurring plots, lacking completely in the strange logic and opaque symbols with which the subconscious tries to signal us. I mean, he made them up. I did not know at the time why I knew that all his dreams were lies. What does the truth sound like? I am meant to tell you about writing fiction, and instead I am telling you […]

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