A lot of people find raw, open testimonies of a personal life very engaging. For some, it's their taste in gossip. For others, they find it admirable, because they can't do the same, even though they know everyone has skeletons in their closet. It's fear of judgment that prevents most people from being raw and open. I guess it depends on what you want for your life. Do you want to be taken seriously and not have groups of people dismiss your work simply because they're judgmental of something you've done in your life, or opinions you have? Then I would refrain. If you don't care and just want to be honest, then, well, I would ask if that's something you really want to be a part of your professional career or if the work is a part of yourself you've been neglecting. If it's neither of those things and you just don't find reason to keep the secrets covered, then I don't see how it matters. I'd be willing to share any part of my life with anyone. However, I try to understand my audience, my goals, my personal psycho-emotional state and how to keep the three separate. There are people out there who can't appreciate raw honesty. It just turns them to their worst self. I worry for those people and so, on those terms, if that is my audience, then I refrain from being too honest with them. But if I feel being honest is going to promote growth, inspiration, or encouragement in someone, then I'll share freely, audience be damned. If I ever write about my life (and I may) then I will surely be doing it for the latter most reason. I will hold nothing back. Do you know why you want to publish this personal work?
For me it's more an issue of irregularity. I can't tell you how many people who've heard the very basic facts of my life respond with a version of, "no way." The few who know enough to cause me problems if they wanted have long said I should write about it. Because it's so unusual? Or because my experience is evidence that bad stuff can be overcome? Not really sure. If I ever go public my personal world will look like Hiroshima. Am I willing to take that chance? Not certain yet. I don't much care about my extended family but a good bit of it could cause one of my children some anxiety, or hurt, something, and I don't want that. At this point if I can just get it out of my head and into the computer I'll count it as an achievement.
I'm late to this conversation because I didn't know it was happening. I'm almost glad I missed it though, because reading the six month progression is very interesting. You started out here,: Quickly evolved to here,: And were eventually making statements like this: I think that's fantastic! I get that you still feel exposed, and that you probably still struggle with what to put out there, but this third sentiment is a total counter to the first. It's exactly the advice I wanted to give when I started reading the thread. I'm glad you decided to just go for it. Damn the torpedoes! Right? I have a side project I add to any time a story worth telling occurs to me. At the moment, it's 20k worth of random anecdotes and several pages of notes on connective tissue and stories I don't want to forget to write later. They're all little short stories and personal essays about sexual identity, relationships, sex, drugs, betrayal, depression, mental health, etc. The genesis of this story, in a nutshell, is that I read In One Person by John Irving about nine months ago and thought, "I'm glad someone finally wrote a mainstream novel with a bisexual male protagonist, but did he have to make it so boring?" The brief section involving the AIDS epidemic in the eighties (cursory as it may be) is truly tragic and far from boring, but the rest of the book features no scandal, no personal discoveries you wouldn't find in a book about a straight dude, and no real strife or struggle with identity or one's place in society. Worse, there is virtually no connection whatsoever to the "gay scene." I'm being harsh. It was a good book over all. It just didn't remotely resemble my experience, so I decided to write something that did. As I said, it's a hodgepodge of essays and anecdotes at the moment, but I plan to string them together in a non-linear narrative and then fictionalize the hell out of it by changing most or all of the proper nouns, compositing characters so it's easier to follow, playing with the timeline here and there for arc purposes and adding a fictional resolution to that arc. (I'm almost forty, but I have no "tie it with a bow" ending to these stories so far, and I despise long form narratives with no clear conclusion. I'll leave that to indie films.) In other words, the final product will be something very different from what you've been discussing here, but anyone who knows me, anyone who was there, (as well as any reader with a brain,) will immediately recognize it as autobiographical (not to mention the fact that some of those involved will be pissed regardless of how I disguise them.) It includes painful setbacks and revelations, extreme regrets and the long-term consequences of bad decisions (both internal and external,) raw vulnerability and only the thinnest layer of protection between my real life and that of the first person "protagonist." Despite any biases that may come through, I've made great effort not to paint myself as the hero or wronged party, especially in during my least proud moments. I want it real. It's scary as hell to write that way, but anything else would be false. I insert myself and my personal experience into my fiction, of course, but this would be something wildly different. Luckily for me, the decision is a little easier because I'm not a very private person. If anything, I over-share as a rule. I don't so much wear my heart on my sleeve as stamp it on my forehead in glaring neon. Still, I understand how hard some of this must be for you, and I'm so glad that you're not only doing it but finding success with it. Good for you!
@deadrats If I were to rework one or two of these little anecdotes/essays into standalone pieces for publication in a periodical, what advice would you give me? What have you found does or doesn't sell in this market?
Unfortunately, few if any of my experiences or personal revelations could be expressed in triumphant Handel fanfare.
@deadrats @Rzero Stumbled across this and decided it's a good antidote to the anxiety of hanging out there for all the world to see. I just put it on my bookmark toolbar for fast access.
Oh no, don't get me wrong. That statement had nothing to do with my enjoyment of the piece. However, if I were to put a musical punctuation mark on my personal narrative, it would be something bombastic with an emotionally ambiguous ending, something that leaves the listener drained, but far from serene. I don't know classical music the way I wish I did, so I don't have an example to give, but something more along the lines of Beethoven, one of the ones that mixes Chopin urgency, Mozart drama, Bach frills and those devastating, signature Beethoven emotional crashes... if that makes sense. To tie this back to the OP, I think the highs and lows and raw emotion of such pieces better reflect the experience of being human. At least they do for me. Hit me up in the Music Thread, if you have any more you'd like to share. I'm always up for a schooling in classical. It's a major gap in my otherwise exhaustive (and possibly exhausting?) knowledge of music.
The details about my life are so depraved that it would scar the reader for life or create a compulsive addiction to the obscene.
@Rzero -- Thanks for pointing out my own evolution of my thoughts and approach to this kind of writing. I know we've been messaging a bit, but I didn't even realize this change in myself until you pointed it out. Knocking those walls down is what I needed to do and continue to do. I do question myself at times, but I continue to be more true to why I'm writing about my life and what sort of message is at stake. One of my early mentors when it comes to creative nonfiction said if you're worried about making friends and what people think, this isn't for you. Writing personal essays and narrative nonfiction is about something else. So, exposing myself is needed to make these stories mean what they're supposed to mean and say what they're supposed to say. As far as what sells, if you can line up your story with hot issues, that always helps. Look at what's popular or going on in the news or going on in the world. Think about how all that stuff affects you. Then tell a story about it. It's still a story you're writing, and that's also important to remember.
How do you handle stories and subjects that are absolutely necessary but might cause harm to someone completely innocent of any culpability? I'm wrestling with that problem and haven't come upon a good solution. I need one. Desperately.
Even writing about ourselves, we choose our subject matter and how we want to handle it. I have written several things that I've never tried to have published for the very reason I didn't want it to negatively affect someone else. This isn't about people liking me or my work. But sometimes a story just doesn't feel like mine to tell and that's not something I always realize until after I've written it. I think one thing to keep in mind is that we're not writing creative nonfiction for it's shock value. These sort of pieces need a lot more than that. You still have to be a relatable "character." As for the other so-called characters is anyone ever really innocent? And if so, how would you writing about yourself and your story paint them in any other light since obviously you don't want to make them look bad. And I'm not sure what sort of harm you think your writing could cause this person. Yeah, if your best friend robbed a bank two weeks ago and hasn't gotten caught, that might not be the sort of thing you want to put out there. I guess this sort of thing is hard to know without examples, but it's always a judgement call a writer has to make. I try to think about what good can come from me writing about something. I think that might be a better approach and help shift your focus a little. It is important to remember not everything we go through is worth putting down on paper let alone publishing. Publishers want the stories from our lives that same something others can relate to or shows an insiders view on something that will help others to understand and perhaps have empathy. Creative nonfiction is still storytelling, but a good story needs to be more than just a good story in this form, I believe.
