“I’m not a ruthless person, so why would I be a ruthless writer?” my writing professor casually says over a dinner with a writer friend of hers and another student. Everyone else nods and continues eating their pad Thai. I am rather puzzled, and I mentally rewrite the sentence over and over in my head so I don’t forget it.
The professor had been telling a story about a very personal novel she wrote and would never publish. Eight years of work - -the involved and laborious work of writing and polishing an entire novel -- to never be published, not even under a pen name. I can understand, as a writer, that the act of writing in and of itself is sometimes the most important part. The therapeutic and rewarding part of the process is simply getting the words onto paper, whether an audience will ever experience them or not.
All three writers surrounding me were in agreement on this, though: do not write about your own life or another person’s personal story. I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of disagreement: I am not a ruthless person, which is exactly why I am a ruthless writer. Maybe that’s what makes all three of them fiction writers and me a nonfiction writer. Maybe they know some secret I haven’t yet learned about what makes the best material. Maybe different people have different opinions.
Whenever I am about to write something personal, I think of Anne Lamott’s advice in "Bird By Bird." She said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Yup, validation. This is a part of my story and I am entitled to tell it, as everyone is entitled to tell his or her own story.
This is not to say the motive behind my personal writing is revenge or redemption, or even just a little public embarrassment at the expense of someone else. I can’t remember a time where I haven’t written narratives: a diary, a personal essay, a more sophisticated journal. What I write about best is my own experiences. In that way words become a tool of power. I am a word shaker on caliber with Liesel Meminger.
Does it make me a bad person (or a bad writer) to write about deeply intimate things? Well, I’ve been thinking about it for weeks and I have to admit I’m undecided. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop. I feel a compulsion towards certain topics or stories. I have no choice but to write to get something sorted in my mind. The decision to share these pieces of writing is a simple one: might this help someone? I think deep down that is a goal of writers; to have their work resonate with an audience, to not write something in vain.
Perhaps I am ruthless. Perhaps as I grow as a person and a writer, I’ll feel unabridged shame and anxiety about the things I wrote about when I was younger: heartbreak, bad friends, loss of innocence, breakups, and embarrassing moments. But I think those are the moments in life that build character, and I think I am honoring them. Under thinly guised details and changed names, there is honor and power in being vulnerable. I’m not a ruthless person, but I am a strong one; and that is why I write.
