It Is Never As Easy As "This" or "That"

Have you ever written or done something so divisive you had to walk away from it?

I did. Prompted by a police officer friend, I began this manuscript back in 2006. I put it on hold during graduate school seventeen years ago, but even as I feel the urge to finish it, there is a bitter that: it's a true story. Real people were hurt by this crime. Real lives were fractured by that spotlight. 

Have you ever been torn between this urge and that consequence? How do you weigh a decision when this outcome threatens that peace? 

This story is big. Big enough for Dateline, big enough for multiple Investigation Discovery shows. And after twenty years, it is still clamoring in my head for closure. Maybe it is meant to be finished, not published. I don't write to publish. I don't write because I want to. I write because I have to (thank you, Somerset Maugham). This narrative has taken on a life of its own, but I don't want it to open wounds. How do I tell this story without breaking that trust? 

Have you ever tried to protect something delicate without a blueprint? 

I could finish the draft and change ALL the names -- even the ones that tether the project to our community. Or I could change every name except the two essential primary figures. Or I could write it using only the broader but necessary names, because the story deserves to be told and those people acknowledged. Some say it needs to be told. But would that protect those who need it most? Or would this narrative fracture the community all over again?

Have you ever had a story so difficult, you avoided telling it?

I have. Long before this one. But people have tracked this story for two decades. At least once a month, someone asks where it stands. I have finally completed the short story. Not because I had to but because for me, writing is therapy. It is also obsessive. It is private, and it is communal. But a project like this cuts both ways: it may be therapeutic for the writer but painful for the survivor. 

We all have our quandaries. We all have our demons and stories demanding an outlet. It is easy to armchair quarterback another person's dilemma, but one person's this rarely accounts for someone else's that. 

This is my quandary. This story, this book that needs to be told. 

It's about this community. And it's about that crime. 

But it's about other communities touched deeply, scarred even. 

The college.

The LGBTQ+ community.

The blue family.

Friends of both sides and some on no side at all.

This family without a husband and a father. 

That family's loss of a son and a brother. 

How do we share stories like this without opening wounds that may have finally healed, if only a little? 

And a few may never heal at all.