I received this beautiful note last week in response to my newsletter, and I’d like to share it and my response with you. It’s relevant to you writers out there, AND to people-pleasers.
Thank you for your raw honesty. Your courage inspires me, seriously. Each time I read what you share, I think, How come I so admire a raw vulnerability in another and still feel fear and shame about some of my stories?Is that a part of the process? This pendulum swinging between feeling brave and totally scared? Certain and questioning?
First of all, thank you. Those words mean a lot.
The honesty stuff is hard, let’s not kid ourselves. It’s pretty damn uncomfortable to reveal things like that about yourself. To make matters worse? People-pleasers, like me, have been taught to appeal to everyone. We’ve been taught that the best way to do that is by appearing bulletproof, which requires we disguise our crap, our inglorious moments; not drag them out into the open for the world to see.(Oh, the fodder you hand others to use against you!)
When I first started writing all those years ago, I did my level best to avoid telling stories that made me look bad. Which left about three topics that I could actually touch. Only problem is, the stuff I couldn’t write about? That’s the stuff that needed to come out before I could move on to anything else. Those stories were the reason I’d felt called to write in the first place.
When I could no longer avoid them, I tip-toed into these stories as though they were minefields. I generalized a lot; used poetic language instead of clear, concise words; pontificated like Donald Fucking Trump; threw in sarcastic barbs; and hinted at things beneath the surface like the literary genius I was. Except not. I made all of my male characters look like sociopaths while I, the hero of the story (no duh!) played their innocent victim. In other words, I made a total mess on the page.
Which is all just part of the process. Unfortunately.
Shortly after I began attending writing workshops at Harvard (like how I threw that in?), I read Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. (I wrote one of my first blogs about it, which you can read HERE.) And, Babe, the scales just fell from my eyes. I suddenly understood what it looks like to tell a powerful story, a powerful story based on unflinching honesty; not on some dressed up bullshit.
I fell in love with Lamott because she admitted to the type of shameful stuff I’d worked so hard to distance myself from. I loved her, not despite her mistakes, but because of them. Because she used them as teaching points. She was sharing all of that muck out of generosity. So she could save others the steep learning curve.
Then it dawned on me that if I could love a sinner like her; if I could find redemption in her experience; if I could be saved some heartache, my readers could too.
Truth heals. Both the reader and the writer.
And let me tell you, it makes for some really compelling writing.
After I graduated, I started sharing my truth-filled stories with a workshop group I’d joined. I would read my pieces and cry because they made me so sad, so ashamed. These women, the members of the group, were angels. They’d encourage me, share their own struggles with revealing themselves in writing, then we’d jump back to work and focus on the page.
After sharing enough of my stories, I began to lose the shame attached to them. (After all, with practice, difficult things are made easy.) The more I wrote, the more I understood that, coming from where I did, thinking the way I did, things couldn’t have gone down any other way.
Little by little, self-acceptance crept in.
Our job as writers is to forgo self-judgment long enough to show our readers WHY we did what we did–those horrible things we’re so ashamed of. Our job is to reveal the mindset, the belief system, behind the actions. Our job is to let readers inside our heads; to allow them to experience life as we perceived it, as we lived it.
I mean, isn’t that why we read anything, for the most part? To have an experience we normally wouldn’t have otherwise? To view the world in a totally different light?
Trust me, there are still times I worry that I have revealed waaayyy too much. I’ve written some pieces where NO ONE has left a trace by commenting. I mean, I’m talking tumbleweeds blowing across my Facebook page. And I can only assume that readers don’t want to say anything lest they appear to agree with me, or sympathize in some way. Or, maybe they simply don’t know what to say. Who knows?
Then I think that I should write some sort of rebuttal underlining the fact that I’m not actually advocating making out with your science teacher at the age of twelve, or taking up with a married man, or hanging around when your husband takes a second wife…
And then I get messages like this out of the blue:
Between your recent blog posts and videos of you and Walt, I’ve found myself filled with such love. In fact, the video you filmed of Walt had me in tears – happy tears – it was so beautiful and oozes joy all over the place! Your love is inspiring and so are you, Ann. And I know getting to this place didn’t happen over night and there were lots of bumps along the way, which brings me to my reason for writing today. I am excited to announce I am launching a podcast on October….I believe you would be a great fit for our audience, Ann, and I’d love to have you on the show!
So, there are a lot of benefits to revealing yourself this way. And it doesn’t come easily. Or without discomfort. It’s a process. I may make it look easy from the outside, but it isn’t. It is, however, worth it.
That’s how you find peace.
