So it is time for me to fess up: not all of my personal anecdotes are 100% true. I mean, often they are, but sometimes I rearrange events or add a little character motivation or occasionally insert that line that I SHOULD have said but didn’t. I had someone earlier this week say that that made me a filthy liar and my reply was, “I’m not lying! I’m editing.”

And, to my mind, it’s true. I don’t fabricate entire events out of whole cloth, or turn people who zig into people who zag. But my innate tendency when I’m telling a story is to punch it up a bit. And I think I’m not alone in this, or at least I have David Sedaris on my side and that’s pretty good backup.

Really, so much of life now is about good self-PR. The whole social media thing? It’s all self-PR, which is part of the reason I so enjoy it. What is the “Jessica” brand? What does it believe in? What does it promote? What did it have for lunch? These are critical questions!

So does punching up the odd anecdote to make it more impactful* or more coherent or, yes, more flattering, constitute lying, or good old fashioned editing for your intended audience?

* “Impactful” is not strictly a word but it SHOULD BE.

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Down with Facebook! For all my Twittering and Digging and Blippring, I hate Facebook. It was kind of okay at first, and neat to catch up with old absentee friends. Then the interface got all cluttered with crap and I realized that I don’t actually care about that many people and my email box was hit with a plague of messages like, “That Person You Hated in High School wants you to join their Pirate Ninja Squad!” Despite the fact that some of my good friends still hang out there (Chris, dude, I am talking to you. Get a goddamned Twitter and save me some pain.), I refuse to participate.