writing

When Private Stories Become Public: The Messy Politics of “Personal” Writing

June 6, 2019 By Carrie Lamanna Leave a Comment

black and white photo of a single barb on a barbed wire fence

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about boundaries. The current state of the abortion debate in the U.S. has forced women into a space where we feel compelled to talk publicly about our bodies, our health, and our sex lives in ways we aren’t fully comfortable with. The Twitter hashtag #youknowme asks women who have had abortions to share their stories to show that women of all backgrounds have accessed abortion services. It’s the abortion debate’s version of #metoo. These campaigns are helping to end the stigma and shame associated with abortion and sexual assault and harassment; however, they also ask women to put their trauma and medical history on display in order to be taken seriously. In short, women have been told they have to earn their humanity.

This cold fact is coming as a shock to many straight, white, cis women who have been able to live most of their lives pretending feminism won and misogyny was dead. We have had to relearn what more marginalized groups have never been allowed to forget: white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy is in charge. It mans the gates, and requires a pound of flesh from anyone asking entry. I’m certainly not the first or the most eloquent person to point this out, but as a writer who blogs about her life and who’s working on a memoir, I have a special interest in the boundaries between the public, the personal, and the private and who ultimately benefits when we share our private stories.

What’s considered public information about us is generally (but not always) straightforward—name, hometown, occupation, marital status, whether we have children, who our parents are. These are all aspects of our lives that are part of some official public record somewhere whether we like it or not. For example, I can choose to not write about my marital status if I want, but the basic fact of whether I am legally married is public information. The personal includes hobbies, political views, taste in music, film, art, etc—things others couldn’t know about you unless you tell them, but not things you want to keep secret from most of the world. What we consider private is information we share with only a small and select group or sometimes no one at all. The private often includes experiences of trauma or loss or past personal behavior we think of as shameful or that’s painful to discuss. But it is these private aspects of our lives that often make for the the most successful and widely read “personal” writing.

I remember the controversy over James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces. It was marketed as a memoir, but then, after Oprah made the book into a bestseller, it was discovered most of the events in the book never happened. Apparently Frey first tried to sell the book to publishers as a novel, but no one was interested. When he shopped it as a memoir, however, it was golden. But why? Why was a book about alcohol and drug addition and the tragic events surrounding it so much more interesting to readers when they thought it really happened to the author? Would Cheryl Strayed’s Wild have made her into a literary superstar if it were a work of fiction or do we need the image of pretty, blonde Cheryl strung out on heroin, to make the story compelling?

I recently read Educated by Tara Westover. It’s an incredible and moving story of how going to college helped her escape from her dysfunctional and abusive family. I read it for a book club and at the meeting, one member described how she used Google maps to find Westover’s sprawling childhood homestead in Idaho. We were all fascinated with the grainy aerial image as we tried to pinpoint the locations of the various episodes described in her book. Our behavior was a strange form of socially acceptable voyeurism, stalking even. We discussed gaps in her life story—information she clearly and deliberately omitted—and were a bit annoyed at Westover for not telling us everything. We felt entitled to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because our discussion of the book was really a jury trial of Westover’s life choices. So much of our conversation revolved around whether her choices were appropriate and justified. Why did she get in the car with him? Why did she return home again after what happened the last time? Why didn’t she stand up for herself? We needed all the evidence in order to pass the right verdict.

This sort of judging behavior (behavior I participated in) is what stopped me from publishing the blog post I started last week on abortion. The ending to my ~~personal~~ private story was that I ended up not being pregnant and not needing an abortion, but I was ready to tell my whole story of abuse in order to justify why teenage me was ready to terminate my pregnancy without hesitation or regret. I was ready to tell that story because so often the marginalized in our society aren’t afforded their humanity and the respect that comes with it—the respect required if we are to trust them to make their own choices. Gays and lesbians have to prove that their love for one another is the same as straight love. Transgender kids have to prove they want to die before we will affirm their identities. Addicts have to bear their souls and ask the world for forgiveness before we will show them empathy. The poor have to prove they work three jobs and go without all comforts to be deemed worthy of assistance. And anyone with a uterus who needs an abortion must first prove they were adequately traumatized.

I’ll continue writing about my life and I’ll continue helping others to write about theirs, but it’s a multi-edged sword. Our stories can increase empathy and understanding, which we hope will lead to a more compassionate world. Our stories can help those who are struggling in similar ways. But our stories can also fall into a trap that serves the status quo. When we tell our stories in a prescribed way to please those who control oppressive systems we aren’t creating real change. We are just asking them to allow us to exist in some some small and limited way, a way that doesn’t ask them to give anything up. We are just begging a rigged jury for individual mercies.

Learning to Trust My Writing Process, Not My Perfectionism

May 16, 2019 By Carrie Lamanna Leave a Comment

a photo of one of my neglected flower beds — What perfectionism really looks like—a weedy mess.

A piece of writing is never finished, only abandoned.

I have seen variations of this quote attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, E.M. Forster, and Paul Valéry, just to name a few. It seems writers and artists struggle with knowing when a work is complete and I took that struggle to Olympic levels. In school, I was always the student who was printing off her paper five minutes before class, not because I had procrastinated but because I was always trying to improve what I had written in some way. (OK, sometimes it was because I procrastinated. Happy now?) I was also the academic sitting on the hotel floor outside her conference presentation room balancing a laptop on her knees and making last minute changes to her slideshow as the audience filed in. For me, deadlines were essential to finishing because without them I would hold on to my writing forever trying to make it perfect. I needed everything to be perfect because my fear of criticism was so intense it felt like impending death.

I think this inability to abandon my work was part of the reason I was never able to publish enough to become a tenured academic. (That and I hated every minute of it except for the teaching part.) I had drafts of at least four articles on my computer that I never submitted for publication because I didn’t think they were good enough. I needed someone to knock on my office door and say, “Time’s up. Give me the manuscript.” But that’s not how things work in academia. For some reason you are expected to be a grown-up and take responsibility for your own work, but I don’t remember that being explicitly stated in the contract I signed. In the end, I decided to quit and pursue a life as a writer on my own terms. Thing about that is there are even fewer deadlines as an independent writer. At least as an academic I had a tenure clock ticking in the background of my life for seven years, and even that wasn’t enough to overcome my fear of criticism and rejection.

My perfectionism and resulting inability to abandon my writing to an audience is why I almost bailed on my promise to publish one blog post a week. After four weeks of doing the work, I was ready to quit because I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t think I would have enough time to write something I could allow you to read. And maybe this post isn’t fit for publication. Maybe I should have spent more time on it, but because perfectionism is part of my OCD I can’t rely on my internal sense of what’s finished and what’s not. I have to trust the process (one afternoon of writing = one post) and force myself to hit the publish button. I’m working with the same perfectionism in my garden. I have to set limits on the work I will do in each flower bed or I will spend all summer trying to perfect one while the others die of neglect. My perfectionism lost me an academic career and more than a few expensive plants, but I’m determined to make this writing career happen. If writing is what you want to do with your one wild and precious life I hope following along on my journey helps you make your dream a reality too.

All I can do is trust the process. The process matters more than the product because without the first the second would never exist. Ass in seat, fingers on keyboard. That’s what matters today and every day. So, I will be live on my Facebook page again tomorrow writing and asking you to join me.

Do Next Write Thing: a 30-minute weekly writing retreat. Fridays at 10 am MT

Do The Next Write Thing

May 3, 2019 By Carrie Lamanna Leave a Comment

a color photo of my tiny writing desk in the corner of my dining room.

My mantra recently has been “Do the next right thing.” I came across the phrase when reading about addiction recovery, and it has become essential in helping my manage my anxiety and OCD symptoms. It’s also become the centerpiece of my new writing practice these past few weeks.

While I am not an addict (don’t get it twisted, people), I’ve found quite a few similarities between my mental health journey and the stories of those recovering from addition. The strongest connection is the need to be in control of everything all the time—to be the smartest, in-charge one in the room. Admitting that I am not in control of the universe (or even my tiny corner of it) is terrifying and can lead to despair and depression.

The way out of that trap, for me, is to take my focus off of next month or next week or even tomorrow and put it on what I can do right now to move forward—the next right thing. For example, when I look up from my computer and look around the room I see the house is a wreck. My son’s pajamas are strewn across the couch (because the living room is where you get dressed, obviously), the side table is piled high with junk mail and school handouts, laundry that needs folding is everywhere. I could go on about the toys all over the floor and the boxes of Girl Scout supplies I’m always tripping over, but I won’t do that because that wouldn’t be the next right thing. My instinct is to curse my life, lament that I am 45 and still don’t have my shit together, and to then spend the next two hours putting together an elaborate month-long plan for how I’m going to clean and declutter the whole house. But that wouldn’t be the next right thing either. What I should do (and I will do as soon as I finish this post) is spend 15 minutes clearing the dirty breakfast dishes, picking up the toys, and throwing out the junk mail. That would be the next right thing. It’s not the sexy thing or the thing that will make me feel (temporarily) powerful and in control, but it is the right thing that will lead to the next right thing because once I have some clean surfaces, I can fold some of that damn laundry. If I keep my focus on the next right thing, in the hour before the kids get home from school I will actually accomplish things that make the house cleaner.

Writing is like this too. What I want are week-long writing retreats in the woods and a well-lit cozy home office where I can start my day with meditation and hot lemon water before I settle in for my uninterrupted morning writing session. That’s a lie. Hot lemon water is stupid (fight me). I want coffee and lots of it. Everything else I want, but it’s my fantasy, not my reality. What I actually have is my messy house and a tiny discount store desk shoved into the corner of the dining room. I could bitch and moan about how I can’t write like this (not that I would ever do such a narcissistic thing) or I could do the next write thing and sit down for an hour and finish this blog post to you. Which I’m doing. (Where’s my cookie?)

Look. Here’s the thing. Art is not something that happens separate from the rest of our lives. It’s just like clearing the table or scrubbing the toilet. It’s something we have to make a regular practice. Something we do in the midst of the chaos. These past three weeks my next write thing has been to publish a post a week. So far, each attempt has begun on Monday, been interrupted at least a dozen times, and then finished on Friday. But it’s getting done. If I’m lucky, the published post is beautiful and sexy, but the process of writing it certainly is not. Most of the time it’s pretty damn ugly. As I sit here in the dusty dining room corner, my face is unwashed, my hair is in a ponytail, and I’m still in my pajamas.

But the work is getting done.

And I want it to keep getting done, so I’m raising the stakes and inviting you to join me. Starting next Friday, May 10 at 10:00 am Mountain Time I’ll be live on my Facebook page to write in my tiny corner for 30 minutes. And I’ll be there every Friday after that. If you receive my Friday newsletter, you can use the time to respond to the weekly writing prompt or you can use the time to work on whatever writing you have been putting off. It doesn’t matter. Just do the next write thing for 30 minutes. That’s how the magic happens—unkempt, in the corner, 30- minutes at a time.

Writing is Messy, Communal, and Scary

April 22, 2019 By Carrie Lamanna Leave a Comment

Overhead photo of a woman's hands typing on a green typewriter. To the left is an open notebook, a stack of letters, and flowers. To the right is a latte and a cookie on a blue plate. The text added to the photo reads "Writing doesn't look like this."

After neglecting it for months, I promised myself I would start posting to my blog once a week. My first post was just over a week ago on Saturday, so I haven’t exactly achieved my goal yet. At least it’s progress. (I’ve been told I need to focus more on small wins instead of focusing on how I fuck everything up. Not sure I’m doing it right, but I’ll keep trying.) The thing is, I don’t have a plan for what I want to say to you today. I just know I promised to write, so I’m writing.

Maybe that’s how it has to start. You sit your ass in a chair and write even when you don’t have anything it say. Of course that’s how it has to start. I know this. I have a damn Ph.D. in writing studies. Writing is a process of discovering what we have to say, not a delivery method. The final published work might be about delivering our completed message, but the process of creating that message—the actual work of writing—is knowledge production. We know more after we have written, even for just five minutes, than we did before we started. Even when we sit down with a clear plan for what we want to write, the process changes things. It’s fascinating to watch this process unfold with an author who’s working on a novel. Characters they thought were villains unexpectedly reveal themselves to be heroes. A coward turns out to be the bravest one in the story. No matter how much they plan and storyboard, fiction writers can never be sure how a story will end until they write the last word.

Fiction writers don’t invent their characters—they get to know them through the writing process. When we write about a nonfiction topic, we learn as much through the act of writing as we do through the research process. When we write about ourselves, we get to learn who we are. But that process is unsettling to say the least. We aren’t fictional characters after all, and realizing that maybe we don’t know everything about ourselves is downright scary. And the fact that we are sharing our recent self-discoveries with a public audience brings the fear level from “damn scary” to “fucking terrifying.” When I hit publish on my previous post about my struggle with anxiety and OCD, I felt like I was standing naked in the middle of the busiest street in town with TV cameras and cellphones pointed at me. In reality, maybe 100 people even bothered to look twice at that post, and most of them were friends and family (hi mom!), so my fears might have been a bit exaggerated. But it doesn’t matter. In my head the fear is real. It makes me feel alone in this world, and more often than not, it stops me from writing.

I don’t want to be alone in this process. I want you to come along with me so it doesn’t seem so scary. The romantic notion of the writer alone in her ivory tower is a myth that holds us back. Writing happens in communion with others. Sure, you have to sit down with pen or keyboard each day and put words on a page, and that has to be done alone. But what happens before, after, and in-between the writing requires people.

I would never have finished my dissertation if it weren’t for a friend who invited me to her house in Michigan for a weekend. She provided another friend who was struggling to finish and me with rooms of our own. We spent the morning writing with our doors closed. At lunchtime we came downstairs to a wonderful meal she had prepared for us. We ate and got some exercise while she read our drafts and provided feedback. We then went back upstairs to revise before heading out to dinner together. We did this for two days. I wrote about a third of my dissertation that weekend after struggling for almost a year to write more than a few good pages. At the time it seemed like magic, but the magic was simply doing the work in the company of other writers and friends who supported and believed in me. When I quit my academic job and decided to start writing memoir and creative nonfiction, I knew I would need that sort of support again, which is why I jumped at the chance to join Janelle Hanchett’s first Renegade Writers group. We’ve had two face-to-face retreats now, and both have been magical.

Obviously, it’s not possible to go on a writing retreat every weekend. (Who would do that laundry I’m always bitching about?) But it doesn’t mean we are doomed to struggle alone either. I’ve found that something amazing happens when we share our writing process with others. We realize we are not alone. Friends and family I would never have suspected of having any interest in writing confess that they too want to write a novel, a memoir, or start a blog. They too thought they were alone, that sitting down to write was scary because they didn’t know what to say and were afraid to show it to anyone, that everything they tried to write turned out a hot mess, and what difference did it make anyway because they would never have the time to be a “real” writer. This is the bullshit we say to ourselves when we try to write in secret. I wouldn’t be writing at all if I didn’t know I had you to read it—even if “you” is sometimes only my friend Jill and my fellow Renegade writers.

I stopped writing when I stopped reaching out and sharing with my writing community. Once I started getting outside my own head, my writing fears didn’t go away, but they stopped controlling my process. My fears became something I could lift and set aside for a precious moment instead of a crushing weight on my chest. Over the next month I’ll be sharing more of my writing process here and on social media. It’s going to be a weird ride, but I’m ready for it. It’s time.