A few years ago, I went to hear author and now presidential candidate Marianne Williamson speak. She was describing a conference she held on race relations in Los Angeles. She said that tension was rising in the room when a white man stood up and angrily addressed an African-American woman.
“We’ve heard about all of this injustice again and again!” he yelled. “This is not helping anything. Why can’t we move on?”
So you want to write about your life, but let’s face it—you’re afraid to share personal stories that involve people you know. Your experiences are populated with your loved ones and this is what’s stopping you. You can’t share your story without including the good, the bad, and the ugly, and those can come in the form of friends and family.
How do you write the truth without alienating your entire social network?
“My son ran into the bedroom and said, ‘Mom, mom, there’s a man in an orange cape sitting at the table’…I went out into a dining room, and there was a Buddhist monk in full robes, orange robes, sitting at my dining room table. And I was very confused; it was a bit surreal….” Hear more of my conversation with Candice Wu on the Embody Podcast.
I was in Michigan this week at our annual girls’ weekend—two wonderfully lazy days spent by the fireplace in a cozy inn, catching up with seven old and new friends. We ate and shopped and laughed and it wasn’t until I got home that I remembered one friend mentioning how stressful her job was.
I have no idea what her job is. I never asked. And because I never asked, I missed a chance to connect with her in a more meaningful way.
I was walking my dog today when she spotted two other dogs behind us on the other side of the street. She kept stopping to look back at them, making strange little growling sounds. Since it was only twenty degrees and I didn’t want to be out in the first place, I quickly became annoyed. I tried to point her in the right direction and convince her that what was a block behind her wasn’t going to hurt her.
When I got home, I sat at my computer and felt the same annoyance. I struggled to get my writing going in the right direction and to remind myself that looking back at past events can’t hurt me.
I used to call myself the reluctant blogger. When the term blog was coined, I dismissed it as frivolous. I studied journalism in college before Al Gore invented the internet, at a time when stories were called articles and were written on electric typewriters (look it up). When blogs came along, it seemed that everyone and their brother had one, and it sort of ruffled my feathers that anyone could call themselves a writer.
Yes, I was a real snob.
Three rabbis walk into a coffee shop. No, it’s not a joke. Three rabbis are sitting at the table next to me discussing a problem at the synagogue. Judy Feinstein has done something wrong. It seems to be a problem of paperwork. Where did she get the information to fill out that form? one asks. And the young one says let’s just cut through the mustard.
Hey. I’m trying to write here. I’ve got my laptop charged up and I was about to unleash some edgy dialogue. I resent the distraction, but only mildly. Mostly I’m interested.
It was a summer day in 1977; I was watching “Days of Our Lives” with my mom while she folded laundry. The announcer broke in. “Elvis is dead,” he said, and my mom cried. I was too young to follow politics, and two years later, I would barely register the upheaval in Iran, but in my world, Elvis Presley reigned supreme. So I cried too.
👉 Enjoy dedicated writing space just steps from Lake Michigan
👉 Benefit from one-on-one developmental editing sessions
