Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There is often a gap between our history and our story about our history. I suppose, since most of us are not famous, that is okay.

We have experiences—those comprise our history. Then we tell people a story about those experiences. Sometimes the stories enhance the histories.

Barack Obama has some doozies. So did George Bush. So did Bill Clinton, and Brian Williams, and…

Well, those are famous people with famous stories and lots of fact checkers. The trouble that famous people have is that there are a lot of fact checkers out there. These fact checkers might as well be called

history-story gap closers

The rest of us, well, we get away with our stories because it isn’t worth checking on them. I suppose this is another security from obscurity case. I guess that is okay.

Want to get away with lots of history-story gaps? Write fiction that is loosely based your history.