When a writer belongs to society now!

"omg what will people think" is a question that now makes me pause before writing, makes me human

In the last few months, as I’ve begun teaching writing as well as practicing it, I’ve heard of an archetype of personal essay struggle some people have when putting pen to paper.

It’s not your classic writer’s block, where you don’t know what to say exactly or how to say it. It more so revolves around this: I want to say something important, but I’m shy and scared about how it’ll affect my life.

In this case, the writer in question is no longer simply overthinking how to appeal to your audience, and make sense to them. In the case I’m referring to, you’re actually worried about how your immediate community — your friends, your family, your partner — are going to think about what you’re writing. If you come out as gay. If you confess to infidelity. If you out yourself politically in a combative workplace. This type of essay contains the bits of your tongue you are constantly biting. What will you do once it’s out there?

I’ve coined two terms for this personal essay struggle since it always branches off into either of these: the liberation essay and the candid essay. In the former, you want to say something you’ve been dying to say but feel no permission to — an unalterable fact about yourself you don’t want to hide any longer. In the latter, you want to give your real hot take/opinion about something you have been holding back for some time. Both are radioactive. Both matter.

But, if the next thing you’re hoping I say is, go right ahead, do the damn thing and say what you need to say, you should probably stop and look elsewhere for encouragement. We seem to falsely tout heroism these days when it comes to sPeAkiNg OuR tRuTh, flying behind some misplaced idea of it’s noble to be honest all the time!

And yeah, there is a nobility in that, if the silencing feels oppressive and you’re willing to face the consequences and backlash. But what if you’re not? I don’t think most people have their lives structured so that they can deal with being candid. You’ll have to face challenges to your viewpoint, scrutiny, questioning, relationships fracturing. Are you really ready for that? I think it’s actually greatly dishonest of me to not caution you against that.

This doesn’t mean don’t find a way to make it work. But for fuck’s safe, people idealize finally saying the thing sooooo much that it’s borderline cliche. Everyone on Twitter jokes about how they never want anyone in their “real life” to know what they’re saying online, and the thing about essays is they will leave a mark on the alcove of your life far deeper than a short thing you fire off. It requires emotional investment, not just in what you say, but in finding the strength to deal with the aftereffect of what you said.

Candor — the raw kind — is a luxury afforded to those who owe people nothing, but in actuality, none of us live in a vacuum. None. And I’ll tell you that, because for years, I’d write about whatever I wanted with little to no abandon. I was the kind of writer that could pay that price. I was single, independent, well traveled, well read, smart, and daring enough to say whatever I wanted about most things so long as I had any opinion whatsoever. But I also identified as the kind of person who, unconsciously or not, had designed my environment for releasing your liberation essay and your candid essay from from countless other writer types out there. I made my goals all about the admiration of faceless readers without cherishing the alternative: having the trust and respect of the people I wrote about, and communicating what I wanted to say to them to their faces.

I’m of the mind that restraint has become unfashionable in today’s age, and it’s something I’ve actually noticed in myself lately. As more and more people want to “get real” on social media, I’ve found I want to post less and less, for it is a paltry substitute for genuine connection and understanding of me. Someone could stalk a thousand posts I’ve written on the Internet, and still have such a limited view or comprehension of my personality. I would know, because that’s the basis for heartbreak I’m suffering through right now (and why I ironically refuse to say anything more about it for now, because he’s watching instead of talking to me).

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote this post because it dawned on me that candor was affecting my personal life in ways that I didn’t anticipate, nor really care about until I found a community that really loved and respected me. “You underrate the value of that,” my friend told me last week.

I’m grieving something extremely large right now, and I’ve seen the horror on several of my friends’ faces in luminous detail more than ever. In the past, if I was going through a terrible time, I felt people instinctively shy away from me because they didn’t know what to say. Whether it was maturity or just filtering for better friends or my own growth or a combination of the above, I now feel the full effects of people who want to lean in greatly to me and comfort me, who aren’t afraid of my darkness, yet still I hold back. Because the thoughts I’m having are not all proper. Several of them are misanthropic, and for once, I find myself (known as extremely candid) holding back. I also find myself holding back on what to write, for once.

Congrats, this is actually a quality to be grateful for. So many essays I could vent about will be flattened into palatable generalities. But the sacrifices I make for my art are ones that let me stay warm and loved in the arms of people I care about, who I find ways to communicate and package my candor to instead of writing about them as if they’re just characters in my story. I belong to society now in a way I didn’t before.

When you identify as a “writer”, you have to detach from the thing you’re experiencing to comment on it directly in that meta way. Like when you take a picture at a concert, you thusly have to take yourself out of it for a second. Writing about your personal life sustains that. I wish I could take everyone through the millions of seconds I’ve lived so they can see the full extent of every vivid memory I’ve had that led me to these words right now. Unfortunately I can’t import my insides in that way. I used to want to though. I used to think it was great to share every detail I could of my inner world, because to me, the unspoken truth was as tragic as the “unlived life” people proverbially comment on all the time.

But now I’m realizing my art is part of my lived life. Every essay that talks about shit that would rock my real, waking world that has to go unstated, contains factoids that still live in my heart, DNA that can still go out there and affect the everyday people I engage with and love. I’m still “writing” when I communicate to them in text, even if it’s not as glamorous as a wistful postmortem on a relationship that could have been saved by my hands but I instead try to memorialize with my pen.

I don’t want to write about myself anymore if I’m noticing that I’m trying to force an “ending” to real time situations as a cope. I don’t want to write as if I understand pithy life lessons if the end isn’t here yet.

If it makes me less accessible, so be it. That should be preferable. You should want access to me firsthand, not idealize me through the screen or the paper. I shouldn’t idealize myself either. I’m a person first, writer second.