When I was taking a children’s writing workshop, we had to write about an incident in our childhood. The instructor liked mine but gave suggestions for making it more exciting. Since those details were fabricated, I was uncomfortable about writing it this way. So he suggested I make it a fiction story, incorporating the fact with fabrication. This turned out very well and sold to several children’s magazines and appeared in an anthology. (I retained the rights so I could sell reprint and anthology rights.) Fiction based upon fact can be fun to write, but it should be labeled as such.

“it was revealed to have been written by the book’s “editor,” Beatrice Sparks, a psychologist and Mormon youth counselor who said she based it on the stories told by some of her students. Sparks has gone on to produce many other “actual diaries” about troubled adolescents, including “Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager” and “Annie’s Baby: The Diary of an Anonymous Pregnant Teenager.”

But when my daughter read this book a few years ago, her copy had notes about the book and this was revealed in the edition she had. I read it with interest as I enjoyed this book myself as a teen and my daughter and I had a great discussion over that fact. You just never know. Thanks for asking about this. I can’t help feeling a bit annoyed when this happens.