“Where were you born?” Every few months, I sit across the table from a new client with a recording device. “Let’s start from the beginning,” I say, after pouring a cup of coffee and settling in to hear their story. I’m a “ghostwriter,” or – as some prefer to say — a “celebrity collaborator.” That means I listen to the details of people’s lives and help form them into narrative, book form.
Over the course of my occupation so far, I’ve traveled over 12,000 miles and conducted interviews on a presidential-campaign bus, in an Olympic training center, in a Tex-Mex restaurant, and in a nail salon. Regardless of location, however, every book begins with questions designed to get to the heart of each person’s story.
Lately, I’ve wondered what it would be like to sit across from Wendy Davis.
Davis, as you may remember, is the Texas state senator who filibustered for abortion rights and was instantly catapulted into the Democratic stratosphere. She’s attempting to parlay her newfound fame into being her state’s first Democrat governor in almost 25 years. Her story of adversity, strife, and hard work has been a cornerstone of her campaign and fundraising.
Davis, we were told, was a divorced teen mother who worked her way from a trailer to Harvard through true grit and independence. What she claimed to be a “real Texas success story,” however, has turned out to be a bit more nuanced. Some of the details were wrong.
Davis divorced when she was 21, not 19 as she has claimed. She did live in a mobile home – her parents’ – but it was only for a few months until she found an apartment. Then she married a lawyer who was 13 years her senior. He paid for her last couple of years of college and her years at Harvard Law School. She divorced him the day after he paid the last bill. During the divorce, he accused her of adultery and received custody of their two children. Her husband said she claimed she said she “didn’t have time for children.”
Of course, she’s not alone in misrepresenting her story. Barack Obama’s memoir has many claims that turned out to be distortions, according to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist David Maraniss, including:
• His claim that his grandfather – a cook in the British Army – was detained by the British in Kenya and tortured.
• The story of his dad’s stepfather being killed by Dutch soldiers as he fought for Indonesian independence.
• Obama’s claim that his father abandoned him when he was two years old.
• His complaint that upper-class Hawaiian girls wouldn’t date him.
And a character called Ray whom Obama called a symbol of “young blackness” was actually half Japanese, part native American, and part black. And he wasn’t a close friend of Obama’s.
If we’re truthful, many of us tell stories in ways that enhance our own reputations. Right?
Read the three reasons why I believe it’s so hard to tell one’s own story . . . honestly.