You think you know me.

Let’s look at the facts as revealed here: I’m a stay-at-home mom with a preschool-aged son. A former librarian, I went to culinary school and from there decided to be a writer. My family is relatively new to Northern California, having moved from the East Coast almost two years ago. I’ve told you my name. Given my birthday (oh, those worries about aging, forcing me to seek comfort on the web).

And if you’ve been here for a while, you know about the defining story of my life, the lifeless premature baby I gave birth to at home when I was sixteen.

But what do you really know?

Jennifer recovering from a late night, 1988? Or another photo to continue the ruse?

How would you feel if I was actually a 25-year-old male advertising copywriter from Peoria? What if I really lived in Buffalo, NY? Or if I was pushing 70, mother to a multitude of now middle aged children, grandmother to teenagers, a Brit using the blog to flesh out a character? This "Jennifer" person you think you've been reading could be someone I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for years. writing to survive might be some kind of grand fictional experiment, an attempt to create a flesh and bones person out of ethereal imagination.

And my stories? What if these were figments, scraps from my mind, absolute fiction masquerading as angst-ridden past? It could be that you've been reading full-blown literary lies à la Margaret B. Jones, the wannabe memoirist who made up a gangland childhood. Turns out my parents have been married for forever, I waited until marriage (or at least love) to have sex, and I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol. Oh, and that isn’t my son, he’s a nephew (never mind that I have no nephew).

Would you feel betrayed?

Don't worry. I don’t have it in me to lie like that, though you'll mainly have to take my word for it and trust your gut. There were times in high school and college when I was a serial liar, self-serving and hidden. My mother believed the stories about my solo nights, even when my boyfriend's car was parked right outside the Little House ("Oh, the car? Dirk leaves it there when he goes to the Cassady's. Sometimes he's had too much to drink, so he stays at their place for the night." "That's exactly what I thought, Jenna.") Later, I hid my unfaithfulness from my college boyfriends, created a protective distance by pursuing empty hopes with relative strangers.

Living a life of lies is a dirty business. I was becoming unrecognizable, murky, untrustworthy, a bad friend. So I stopped lying and regained a hold on fidelity. And while those old kinds of lies are no longer tempting, I still struggle with my tendency to exaggerate minor facts or to deny my feelings. Attempting to be good is a life-long process.

There is a difference between making things up to avoid punishment and creating stories to entertain. Stories aren't lies (and sometimes the lies we tell in our life stories aren't fibs either). If the blog tale is well-told, the characters believable, the created world tangible, so real you can taste it, does it matter if it actually happened? How would you know if it did?

We’re taking it all on faith in this blogging world, want to believe that everyone is who they present themselves to be. For the most part, I think people are genuine. Yes, we have plenty of time to shape our online selves, but we’re generally real. Still …

There must be bloggers, perhaps ones you read every day, who have created fiction under the guise of truth. Their blogs are ostensibly about their day to day existence, may even include some pieces of fiction or poetry or personal essay, but some of the facts have been turned inside out.

Maybe the writer doesn’t want to be identified, or is playing, having fun being someone else. The character that demanded life is finally born in a blog, fully realized, solid, interactive (the fresh-eyed college graduate moving back to her hometown; the landlocked fly fisherman reminiscing about his days of streams and trout; the tech-savvy doting grandma with an herbal tea obsession, a minor character in a SAHM's life). Or they add a totally fictional detail, erase a husband, gain a Weimaraner, make a virtual move from Asheville to Albany.

And what of it? Readers are entertained, the writer has an enthusiastic, satisfied audience. These are tenuous connections we have, the lengths of spider's silk stretching across the ether from blogger to blogger. Many of us have never even spoken. In these circumstances, does the truth matter?

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Tags: blogging, truth, lies, fiction, faction, facts, fictional characters, trust, memoir, openness, storytelling