Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Where Do You Draw Your Blogging Line?
Who reads what you write and does it matter?
Yesterday, my cousin, a brilliant guy, several years older than me, who travels the country attending conferences and making speeches because, he claims, he can’t sell his business and retire, although I’m pretty sure he believes if he quits running at top speed all the time, he will keel over in a heap, sent me an email, written at the very crack of dawn, to tell me I was a “very brave lady.”
He said he’d ‘stumbled’ on a post from a few years ago.
It had to have been “The Wire,” I thought. Nothing else would have elicited that kind of response from him. I wrote back. Yes, he answered, it was “The Wire,” an essay about my abortion experience in 1967, six years before the legalization of abortion in the U.S.
It was a raw piece, written in a moment of intense frustration and anger about idiot new laws being proposed to restrict access to safe abortion. The particular trigger was something some two-bit Congressman from Missouri had said, I can’t even remember what it was. Neanderthal, misogynist, disgusting, worse than the stuff that was said when the original abortion debate was going on. When we go backward in time policy-wise, is it also necessary that the dialogue becomes so exquisitely dumb? Is noun-verb agreement too much to ask?
Anyway, when I got this email yesterday, it was a jolt. My cousin, my older, handsome, accomplished cousin, the one we all looked up to, well, he’d just read about my illegal abortion 48 years ago. Not a secret anymore, I guess.
Everything I write, I write with the expectation that some of the people who read it will be people I know, some of them will be relatives, like my husband and children. My niece and nephews. My brother. My brother’s email just showed up as a new subscriber to my blog. If he reads the new posts when he gets those email notifications, he will meet a person he doesn’t know.
Do I make that my risk or is it his?
There have been times when my husband has closed his iPad after reading one of my posts and say, “I didn’t know that about you.” Or “I didn’t know you felt that way.” No. Why would you? I think. I don’t even know. Like Joan Didion said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”
Sometimes I write it down, fill this beautiful clean WordPress box with words, read what I’ve written, and delete it all. Usually for no reason. Just because it’s not right or not ready, often because even in the writing of it, I still couldn’t figure out what I thought. It was a piece going nowhere.
But sometimes it’s because I think about who might read it and whether that person would feel bad because of something I wrote and whether that person deserves to feel bad because actually some people in a person’s life actually do deserve to feel bad if an honest piece of writing exposes their behavior. If I feel like it’s hurtful, too big a price to pay for the joy of getting something out of my head, then I deep-six it.
How do you handle what you write about? What goes into your decision process about what’s ready for prime time?
Talk to me.
16 Comments on “Where Do You Draw Your Blogging Line?”
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I wrestle with this issue and usually come down on the safe side when loved ones or close friends might be hurt by what I say. I made that decision several years ago when I started writing columns, but I havel a sense of unease about it. I am finding, working with my poetry group, that it is easier for me to approach the darker stuff through poetry, but outside of my group, probably no one will see it. I’ve also written a few short stories and find fiction very liberating because I can put the characteristics of several people into one or totally make things up. Or take an actual event and change and embellish it so others involved probabIy wouldn’t recognize it. ‘ve thought about giving up my blog and columns to concentrate on fiction, but I really enjoy the interactions I have with others when I write those things. As you can see, it’s quite a conundrum for me. I’m glad you broached it; I’ve enjoyed the other comments.
I have written a little fiction (very little) but would like to do more. That’s probably a good route to take.
I have struggled with this a lot, Jan. I made it through some really tough times by journaling, that helped me clarify my emotions and move past a lot of emotional pain. Although I have been praised for my good writing when I have shared intimate details of my life, I usually find it useful to distinguish between writing in a journal (for my eyes only) and writing my blog. Too many times I have been surprised at who reads my blog (and also close friends who aren’t interested). I guess that I wouldn’t say anything on my blog that I wouldn’t be willing to share with the people close to me on public transportation. I think it is really easy to forget that posting a blog is a very public act. When I do share my deeper self it is out of a desire to create a sense of shared experience and to help others sort out their own feelings.
I’m one of those who thinks that your posts about more personal subjects are very compelling.
Thanks, Jan. I appreciate it.
Once I decided to write a blog, I told myself I had to be okay with anyone reading it . . . and I am . . . very okay. Telling the truth about myself has been liberating.
Off limits for the blog: children, grandchildren, living ex-husband (the dead one is okay to write about, sans name). Also the ten or twelve blog followers I actually know. I don’t self-censor opinions or subject matter. But I’m retired. If still employed I’d probably use a nom de plume.
Oh, it is so very hard not to censor. Especially when I know some people from work now follow my blog. It inhibits some of my best writing. Only when I can break out of that shell that I soar. I hold back on things that would hurt those I love–especially my kids. That’s my line.
“Only when I break out of that shell…” is so right. Thinking about what others will think has a very dampening effect so I don’t. But I’m with you on the line you draw.
I am more likely to write out things anonymously than when something is linked to the actual me.
Very much affects what I write. I have a pseudonym but it is known in other circles to be associated with me and for that reason I am careful – although probably not nearly enough – mainly because of fellow workers who are friends, and often what I write is about the darker side of my existence, my struggles, and that isn’t best reading for work or family.
I rarely share my blog with friends, only those who are at a safe enough distance to be relatively unaffected by me or whose opinions of me do not affect me either. If that makes sense?
I’m all about the darker side and the more complex. Persistently happy blogs are cute but not interesting. I see your point though. It does make sense.
These questions come up with writing fiction, too. A friend of mine has chosen to write under a pseudonym specifically so her family won’t know it’s her. I know that what I write may offend friends and family and I have lost friends over things I have written. I strive to not purposely offend or upset, but at the same time, I have to be honest with myself. If I change my thoughts, my words, in order to avoid upsetting someone, then who will I eventually be? Not the person I want to be but a person who has had their true self slowly bitten off and discarded. And as Alicia says above, your posts always make me think, question, and wish I could write like you do. I doubt I’d have those reactions if you were not being so honest with your words. Please don’t change.
Thank you! Everything I post is honest but I don’t post everything I’d like to write about. If that makes sense.
You inspire me through every post I read. Your honesty and authenticity is sweetly refreshing. “No. Why would you? I think. I don’t even know. Like Joan Didion said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”” This is so true! Sometimes we realize things as we are saying them. Awakening. It never stops.
Thank you! Don’t you find that to be true, that things make sense only after you write them down,the sentence construction almost like building a house? It’s what I really love about blogging.