The Six Most Dangerous Words

"All you have to do is . . . " are, according to DJ Anderson, the six most dangerous words. How often have the complexities of a human life been distilled into this simple catch phrase in order to explain it all? Using a blog she has called "The Six Most Dangerous Words," Anderson's goal in posting is to focus on the absurdity of trying to dilute each story into a "category" and then expose the web of intricate emotional decisions that actually led to its outcome. Some of her stories are non-fiction-character studies of real people, using their real names . . . in many ways, tributes. Some of her stories are thinly disguised as fiction. To those who know her best, she says, "It won't be hard to make the connections back to the non-fictionalized circumstances that gave rise to these accounts." One of the things Anderson has learned about writing from memory is that her memory is sometimes not very reliable. Not wanting to be held accountable for details that she's filled in for the sake of the storytelling, she categorizes these stories as fiction. As a colleague's father used to say, "Don't let facts interfere with the telling of a good story." Finally, some of Anderson's stories are a complete fabrication coming entirely from her imagination. She occasionally throws in a poem here and there to change the pace. Volume II of "The Six Most Dangerous Words" is a collection from 2013, 2014, and 2015 of blog postings. Additional stories can be found on the web at authordjanderson.blogspot.com