The topic of being "seen" as a writer fascinates me; how much do we write that covers us up, and how much do we write that opens us instead? I would say most writing falls into the second category-- well, the writing that I like to read does, anyway. To answer Crikett's question about whether a social media screen acts as a filter, yes, there doesn't seem to be enough space in one Facebook post or one Instagram caption to sum up the entirety of being human. However, no two posts are the same, so while it's easy to recreate this glossy rendition of a fairly-average life, your posts look different than the next guy's, and it takes courage to put yourself out there as you and only you, even if you are only looking for validation from Internet strangers. The idea of perfection runs rampant on social media, and I think that stands in the way of showing one's truest self; it takes courage to be who you are, not who others want you to be. (Ugh, sorry about that pukey cliche. It seemed to fit.)
Growing up with a judge for a mom, I got my fair share of comments about gavels and bad guys. While those seemed trivial, I did grow up with a pretty strong belief in telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
However, when my mom was diagnosed with a near-fatal autoimmune disorder in the fall of 2013, I went to write about it and found that things got... Fuzzy. My memories were shifting and my time spent away at school made it difficult for me to understand everything that was going on at home. But, I completed a piece for a Creative Writing class about her sickness, and even though I was scared shitless at letting others read and interpret my rawest emotions, it was a form of healing. It was connecting with others about what it means to be scared, about what it means to be wholly uncertain about the future, about how to react when life throws you something you didn't think you were ready for.
It wasn't all true, though. I made up stories, I left out parts, I switched things around that I didn't like. Memoir writing is a perfect platform for exploring this "fuzziness;" is it fair for the writer to have that ability to change things? I would argue yes, when it comes from a place of trying to understand and connect with an audience. Andre Aciman, in his essay "How Memoirists Mold the Truth," writes, "Writing alters, reshuffles, intrudes on everything... And maybe this is why we write. We want a second chance, we want the other version of our life, the one that thrills us..." And here is where the element (issue?) of truth comes in to having yourself be seen through your writing. What would my mom, the judge, say to my claims of, well, fiction in my account of her life? I would argue that the stories I told never hurt anyone; they were for the benefit of both the reader and me in order that the story could go on as it needed to be told. The pain, the guilt, the fear remained-- the vulnerability remained. In that moment, in that classroom, I felt as though I was being truly "seen" through my writing. I think that if you can find some element within a story with which to connect with your reader, some small morsel of shared intimacy, you've found your truth. You've made yourself vulnerable. And you've found success as a writer.
To be creative is to be vulnerable, to put your innermost thoughts and ideas onto a blank document for all the world to read is terrifying. It takes courage. Brene Brown, in her TED Talk The Power of Vulnerability, lists courage as one of the main traits people who believe they are worthy of love posses. We ask how to apply that vulnerability, especially when it comes to asking, to the world of and our futures in writing, and I would say that entails taking the idea of courage and pushing it one step farther into having confidence. Confidence in approaching a situation not by asking for writing, but asserting that your writing is needed and showing you are capable of producing. That's a scary thing to do. It takes risk. Creativity takes risk. But that's why it needs to occur, because by pushing ourselves into that unknown space, we produce better work and find greater success (personal and communal) as writers.
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