Sharing Ourselves
There’s a line in my YA fantasy, Evangeline’s Heaven, when Michael, Evangeline’s enemy-love interest expresses his admiration for her. My kids chuckled “Didn’t Dad tell you that when you started dating?” No one else would catch that detail, though, so I was “safe”.
But did that matter if people knew or not?
Which got me thinking, how personal is too personal in our writing? If you’re working on a memoir, it seems obvious, but just because you want people to know your story, doesn’t mean you have to give them everything. Same with fiction. We often use our own experiences or the people around us (disguised or not), but how much is too much?
Answer: the amount you’re comfortable with. Writing does make us vulnerable. It’s about being brave. But there’s a balance between what you want to share and what you want to keep to yourself. I fear that much of the rhetoric is “bleeding yourself onto the page”—putting it all out there—but that’s not necessary. You can still have a strong, cohesive story, even a memoir, if you limit how much of yourself you expose. Instead, it’s about being true, honest and open with what you do choose to share. Michael’s line will go unnoticed by almost everyone. That’s the way I want it.
So yes, “write what you know”, but ultimately, it’s your story, so in fact, we should alter the expression: “write what you want to share.”