Writing nonfiction is nothing more than just being an unrepentant gossip. Is it fair to the people you write about to share the experiences or secrets you know, calling it writing, calling it memoir, calling it just drawing on your life for inspiration? Could sharing these things ever be fair to the people you spend your life with, trust you, love you, could be hurt by what you have shared?
I can't take back any of the love poems I wrote before I fell in love with my girlfriend; the woman I'm going to propose to, the woman I'm going to grow old with. I can't take back any of the secrets I've shared about people, that are freely available to anyone who wants to piece the stories together. I can't even apologize for the stories I've told, because I'm not going to stop writing them. There are people I wish I could call and tell I'm sorry, but I can't, because I'm not. What I feel guilty about is that I don't feel sorry about it; that I somehow rationalize writing about private experiences and sharing them with anyone who cares to read it by saying that it's necessary, that it's something I have to do.
It isn't something anyone has to do. It's selfish and indulgent and unfair. It's unfair to:
the best friend who reads a story about how we once fucked and never talked about it again,
the father who googles up his daughter's writer ex-boyfriend and reads a poem about her,
the aunt who reads her dead sister's son's poetry about her battle with cancer,
the girlfriend who loves someone so dearly she can't help but read his shit poetry about another girl,
All out in the open.
There are so many more examples that thinking about them just makes me want to go back to writing fiction and stop airing out dirty laundry, to stop getting off on strangers identifying with me because I share things that sometimes make me feel sick to my stomach to let out. But in every story, in every piece of 'fiction' is reality. In every joke lies a bit of truth, and in every story there's an experience there that I've typed up without permission.
To be fair, the only thing I really have a right to write about are internal admissions. I can write about my shortcomings if I feel the need to, but not everyone else's. That can't truly be justified. I could write about how I seem to be unapologetically narcissistic, vain, childish, selfish, an addict, a thief, a liar, and that I exaggerate things a million times a day. Just before submitting something that I'm truly embarrassed to share, I consider writing under a pseudonym. I consider rewriting it to cast myself in a more positive light, or just deleting it. I hover over the 'Send' button on emails or 'Submit Comment' on websites and think about what will happen if some time in the future someone close to me actually reads all my work. What will happen if an employer calls me into their office to ask me why I write about being a sexual deviant or how I used to rail coke or have prostituted myself on a few occasions, or how I [post edited for content]
I can't take back any of the love poems I wrote before I fell in love with my girlfriend; the woman I'm going to propose to, the woman I'm going to grow old with. I can't take back any of the secrets I've shared about people, that are freely available to anyone who wants to piece the stories together. I can't even apologize for the stories I've told, because I'm not going to stop writing them. There are people I wish I could call and tell I'm sorry, but I can't, because I'm not. What I feel guilty about is that I don't feel sorry about it; that I somehow rationalize writing about private experiences and sharing them with anyone who cares to read it by saying that it's necessary, that it's something I have to do.
It isn't something anyone has to do. It's selfish and indulgent and unfair. It's unfair to:
the best friend who reads a story about how we once fucked and never talked about it again,
the father who googles up his daughter's writer ex-boyfriend and reads a poem about her,
the aunt who reads her dead sister's son's poetry about her battle with cancer,
the girlfriend who loves someone so dearly she can't help but read his shit poetry about another girl,
All out in the open.
There are so many more examples that thinking about them just makes me want to go back to writing fiction and stop airing out dirty laundry, to stop getting off on strangers identifying with me because I share things that sometimes make me feel sick to my stomach to let out. But in every story, in every piece of 'fiction' is reality. In every joke lies a bit of truth, and in every story there's an experience there that I've typed up without permission.
To be fair, the only thing I really have a right to write about are internal admissions. I can write about my shortcomings if I feel the need to, but not everyone else's. That can't truly be justified. I could write about how I seem to be unapologetically narcissistic, vain, childish, selfish, an addict, a thief, a liar, and that I exaggerate things a million times a day. Just before submitting something that I'm truly embarrassed to share, I consider writing under a pseudonym. I consider rewriting it to cast myself in a more positive light, or just deleting it. I hover over the 'Send' button on emails or 'Submit Comment' on websites and think about what will happen if some time in the future someone close to me actually reads all my work. What will happen if an employer calls me into their office to ask me why I write about being a sexual deviant or how I used to rail coke or have prostituted myself on a few occasions, or how I [post edited for content]
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