“Why is real so hard to find?” –Sheryl Crow
Lately there has been talk among the writers that hang out on Agent Query about their goals. To my surprise, the idea of honesty came up. Honesty in their work and with themselves–that sort of honesty. Which I must say sort of took me by surprise. I had assumed that if you had progressed to the point where you were conversing with other writers and sharing your work within the forum that you had progressed to the point where honesty was simply implied.
As a teen, writing in my diaries, I was not particularly honest with myself. Know why? Because it takes courage. Because it opens up a whole new door to yourself that may or may not be hiding a flood that once released, you may not be able to handle. Therefore, my diaries stayed on safe ground. They were honest accounts of my days, but they left out a great deal of who I really was, my motivations, my feelings, my take on things. My diaries were more like a grocery list of my day’s events. Ocassionally, in a different journal, the real me came out in safe, short bursts of soul-bearing honesty.
I suppose in some ways, when a writer is honest in putting it all down in their work, this is why it can be hard for them to share. There is this deep layer of honesty that others–particularly those that they know as family or friends–may not like or may take them by surprise. By sharing your work you’re allowing them to see that layer of yourself which previously may have gone unnoticed. I suppose this is why when I saw ‘honesty’ come up, I was surprised. I thought it was an element that had to be deeply ingrained safely within you before you would be ready to share yourself on a forum.
Then not too much longer after that, I discovered that I was wrong to assume that. Just because I had matured to the point where I could release that part of me, that I could be honest and have the courage to stand beside myself and my work, it didn’t mean that others had as well. One writer began a post which got a lot of other writers all up in arms. Know why? Betcha can guess! Because the writer was not honest with the other writers nor with him/herself.
But mostly what I learned was that not all writers are honest in their writing. And strangely enough, once you become aware of ‘honesty’ you can see when and where it is lacking. When you write, you have to put it all down. All the thoughts, feelings, motivations, everything. Even the painful stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the delicate stuff. There has to be a trust within yourself in order to lay it down. I think this would be especially hard in a memoir–judging by my own diary writing–which demands that you put it all down. If you don’t do it, then you don’t reach that level of honesty for your reader. They may not realize what it is exactly, but they likely will leave the work early thinking something along the lines of, “It didn’t really speak to me. There was something missing or lacking and it didn’t draw me in.” If they know how to spot honesty, they might think, “Very well then. If you are not going to give me what I want and are going to hide behind your potted palm and toss out interesting ideas and events without giving me the real grist of it, I am not going to read on any further.” And like that you have lost your reader because you were not real, you were not honest.
As a writer, one of the hardest things to do is to trust your reader. You have to trust them not judge you at an incredibly deep level. You have to trust them to feel for you, to read it all and say, “Yes, although you have done some very bad things, I still think you are a fine person because I can see what has driven you to these things. I forgive you for what you have done and I thank you for letting me in and most of all, I like you all the more for being honest about it.”
Have you read Sting’s memoir? He was not honest while at the same time, being honest. It was as though he knew that he has an element in his personality that is not as favorable as others and so he tried to hide it. It made me not like him as a person. Before I read his book, I liked him. Now? Not so much. And it came down to honesty.
Tags: writing by Jean
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