How personal is too personal? I write everything and anything that is on my mind, always. I write what I know, so it oft depicts my every day life, the triumphs and tribulations of my life, big and small. It can take form as a poem, journal entry, short story (ies), essay, or, in one rare case, an entire novel. Regardless, everything I write is very precious to me, and all of my pieces are like dear children to me. (And yes; I have a favourite! ) For these reasons, I find it very hard to share with anyone anything I have ever written, especially if it comes across as blantantly autobiographical. Everything of mine is, to an extent. I paint a picture of myself with every page. Perhaps this explains my love of reviewing here, even though I have never submitted anything to be reviewed by others. Are there pieces that you would never share with your fellow WF-ers here? Why? The topic / theme? The character development? SPAG errors? What? Just curious. -D PS: What sparked this was the fact that I -do- have something to submit, but I fear it's too personal to post on the World Wide Web. Hmm.
I have a very private side, and it will (and should) remain so. This is the Internet. Display your naked throat, and someone or something out there will gnaw on it.
I don't really share my work with anybody. Occasionally, I let someone take a little peak at a snippet, but I prefer to keep the work private until I feel that it is finished and its the closest I can get to perfection. I don't generally write very about anything very personal though, so its not about revealing anything about myself. I just don't like anybody to see my work before I feel that its finished.
The only reason I wouldn't post would be due to explicit content, a.k.a. inappropriate. Although, Cog is right, if you want it to stay personal, keep it personal and don't post it.
I don't post anything here because I don't want critique. Plain and simple. I'm guessing that, even though I keep myself as a character out of my writing, all of my work is very personal because I write to try to connect to other people--my futile wish is to make a friend from it. Haven't succeeded so far. So when people say they want to see my writing, I often shy away because it's been my experience so far that they don't mean it. When people say they're interested in my work and then they're not, yes, I take it personally, because this is the purpose of my writing, to reach out to others. When they turn their noses it's like they're slapping my hand away. So even though I widely share my work, I'm always embarrassed to do so because I feel, who cares about it? Who ever will? Why bother? The feeling is even worse when it's people from real life, especially family. I don't bother showing them anything, and whenever my mother says a teacher or something asked to see one of my websites I'm humiliated, because they never go and look at them as far as I can tell. I'm terrified of getting the old familiar "Oh, your writing looks so nice! Unfortunately I don't have time to read it, but I'm sure it's good"--which is what I've been getting from people my entire life. It's hardly a compliment. And I don't dare tell people just how personal much of my writing is (i. e., how the fiction relates to my own life and feelings), because I've found that those few who ARE interested in my writing aren't interested in ME.
Everything I write is part of me, the inspiration usually comes from an experience I had or some idea that's close to me. But I do have one that I won't share here... I've posted it in a select few sites but that's it.
Share as much as you feel comfortable. We all have different comfort levels, so there is no way to have specific guidelines.
There are a few poems I wouldn't share, mainly because of highly emotional/ darker side of me which I do not care to share wuth anyone.
In reality, I am a shy person to people I don't exactly know or have opened up to, so no one exactly knows of my writing passions except for my close family. When I write something, I might continuously think about it, and may make hundreds of reversions until I feel it can't be any more perfect, so my work may be finished, but I won't say it is finished because I might have that gut feeling that it isn't. And I won't allow anyone to see it until it is completely finished. Some works are more personal than others, but somehow a small- extra large piece of me gets implanted into my creations. That's why I don't like people who know me to read my work- it can become embarrassing when they realize it, or learn more about me from my writing. But I would allow people who didn't know me to read it because they wouldn't exactly know. If at all, I let my mom look at some of my creations, but she doesn't exactly give me a concrete critique- she'll either say "I really liked it," "It was good," or "It was okay." That doesn't exactly help me, you know? But then on the internet I am paranoid of theifs, so it isn't going to happen. I like to help other people with reviewing, but I'll just keep mine on my hard drive. I don't want to have to learn my lesson the hard way. I've already learned that some people can be really mean.
