In an interview I did last year with professor, multi-genre writer, and Muse instructor Nancy McCabe, Nancy and I discussed how a writer can develop an internal barometer around when they’re ready to write about traumatic or vulnerable experiences. I love Nancy’s response to this question:
I think we know when we're ready to write about those difficult experiences. We might put our toe in the water and then yank it right back out—or we might discover that we're ready to immerse ourselves. I think we have to be attuned to our bodies' signals and honor those. But what my students and mentees have shown me over and over is that people are often very ready to do the writing, but tend to be more nervous about sharing that writing with an audience. I think it's important to just write what we need to write, understanding that we don't have to ever show it to anyone, we don't have to publish it, we don't have to do anything with it. But sometimes in the process we work through the material enough that we discover we're ready to share it with others.
I admire and value Nancy’s point about becoming “attuned to our bodies’ signals and honoring those.” There’s something singularly refreshing about a professor who’s able to talk about being attuned to the signals of our bodies, isn’t there? And this is an idea, or part of a cluster of ideas, that I’m approaching more and more myself— that it’s ok to follow your inner knowing and to follow it by way of breath and posture and bodily sensations.
The point about writing what we need to write first, and then assessing when (or whether) we’re ready to share it is also an important one. When I first began consistently writing about my family, inner world, and personal life, probably during my MFA program in poetry, I experienced that very real discomfort bordering on panic that greets the writer of autobiographical material. As a poet, I found that my best poems came out of finding indirect ways in, ones that relied less on straightforward narrative, and more on voice, image/metaphor, and subtle hints of narrative that could keep a potential reader engaged, without making either of us feeling bogged down by too much “telling.” (I learned to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant,” as Dickinson would have it.)
I have taken these strategies with me (back) into prose, but of course essay is a different animal and potentially exposes the writer in different ways than a poem. In poetry, we write behind the persona of a “speaker,” and we are taught that it’s bad form to ask a poet to pin down which parts of an apparently autobiographical poem really happened. In nonfiction, the assumption— the agreement with the audience, in fact— is that, yes, this really happened. We still have choices about how we tell something, how much we reveal, how personal or removed we pitch our narrative voice. But it happened, yes.
I have talked to fellow writers before about how for me there is a feeling that emerges when I know I’m onto something, some rich vein of material. The feeling is akin to the thought, “Uh-oh. This might be just over the line of what I feel comfortable publishing.” That’s when I know I’m onto something good: when I’ve made myself a bit vulnerable. When there’s something at stake. And, reflecting on this through the lens of bodily cues offered by Nancy McCabe, I think can see how I’m registering those cues, as well. I know I’m ready to write it and potentially publish it when I sit up a little taller, when I feel a deep intake of breath, before it steadies again.
What about you? I invite you to write down when you know you’re ready to take on vulnerable material. I’ll leave the comments open to everyone, in case you want to post your response below.
I also love this point from my interview with Nancy McCabe, about the value of finding language for the ways she survived sexual harassment and the violation of an intruder entering her home as she slept:
So many readers have said things like, "Something like this happened to me, but I didn't know what to call it." There are people out there inclined to downplay such experiences, but ultimately, those people aren't the audience I was writing for. I was more interested in connecting to those who are sorting through the impact of their own. I was more interested in the way we offer each other permission when we talk openly. We shine a light on the particulars of our experience as a way to shine a light on the things that connect us, that reassure us that we're not alone.
You don’t have to be ready to tell your most vulnerable stories. In fact, you may choose never to include those moments in your writing, and that is perfectly acceptable. Your subject matter is your own choice. You’re in charge of it. But for those of us who work at the edges of what we’re comfortable sharing, who are parsing it out as we go, it helps to know that “we offer each other permission when we talk openly.” And to know that there are mentors and communities out there who will support you when you do.
Early bird prices extended through Sunday March 10th!
If you’re interested in working with Nancy McCabe, check out her ten-week spring essay class through Muse, Shapes of Stories. The course begins April 28th, and payment plans are available. More information at the link!
There are also spots left in Megan Baxter’s five-week course, Memoir in Collage, and in my two remaining Zoom-based generative writing workshops in my current drop-in series.
‘Shapes of Stories’ and ‘Memoir in Collage’ are on sale through Sunday 3/10.
Joanna, these are really timely thoughts for me. On one hand, I am writing through some material that makes me sit straighter, breathe faster, feel just a little uncomfortable, and I've wondered if those are signs I should keep going or wait. That advice to write it out, anyway, and decide later is good. Also, I'm with you: I do sense these are stories that are important for me to tell right now.
On the other hand, I've gotten my memoir-in-process back from beta readers, and the consensus is that I need to tell more engaging, compelling personal stories--and in some of those instances, I think I'm not ready to share those stories with the world. I don't know what that means for my memoir project. Do I redirect it toward the stories I'm ready to tell, and in that case change the focus? Or do I let it wait?
I really love this post. I've been feeling stuck the last couple of weeks and sitting with that "very real discomfort bordering on panic" that comes with self disclosure/exposure. The idea of writing what we need to write and separating the act of writing from the act of sharing feels really freeing. I'm still feeling into what in my body tells me I'm ready for the sharing part. I don't have much experience sharing my writing yet, but I think what I feel is a quickening, an urgency that I can only compare to the experience of being poised on the starting block before a swim race. There's a rush of adrenaline and then a deep stillness and then the sensation of the plunge.