In the understatement of the day, I say to you simply, "Wow".

As a new blogger, I have had a foggy zygote of these ideas bouncing about in my head, mostly in the form of a big, acid-green question-mark. Thank you for thinking it through so I didn't have to (grin) and for laying it out with such acuity and eloquence.

Wizard.

Thank you. (By the way, I love your blog title and enjoyed reading your blog the other day, but couldn't comment because I don't have a blogger account.)

This post was actually part of a series put together by Julie over at http://theartfulflower.blogspot.com . Which I should have put in the post itself, but I never remember to.

You saw Juno, didn't you?

I struggle with this very thing, with being so bored by the inside of my head that I can't bear it anymore. And then I worry about the stories I tell, my right to them, the damage or effect the may have on others. It's as if I can only see the line when others have egregiously crossed it.

First, I love that poem and was just quoting it yesterday.

Second: "One: If the cost of maintaining relationships is keeping secrets for those who have hurt us, so that we pay for the consequences of their actions, is that right?"

This is how I feel. It is toxic to become someone else's secret keeper.

However, we also can be considerate of other people's feelings.

Awesome, way to put it out there. I suppose I'm one of the "boring" bloggers, but I feel strongly about not alienating the real people around me. Maybe it is because I'm not a writer per se, but an engineer, and see it pragmatically and not as an art. Funny quirky and interesting things are entertaining enough to post for me without dredging up any stories that might cause a rift with someone I know.

At least I dodged the full name bullet... but I still adhere to writing as though I will be found out.

I'm really impressed by the honesty you put forth in this post.

I agree that we have to talk about people. However, I think that there are times when we really ought to be accepting more than 50% of the blame. I think that sometimes, things aren't about blame at all (even on our blogs.) Mostly, things about responsibility instead of blame. What responsibility do I share in my own actions and other people's actions. What responsibility do I have to act more or write more. EXCELLENT post!

Gwen, yes, good point.

Emily, I agree that it is important to try to be considerate of other people's feelings and the fact that they have their own truth, or their own version of it; at the same time, I also think that it's an effort that is ... I don't want to say wasted. But ultimately we can't control how other people will react to what we write or how we remember things no matter how considerate we try to be, so there's a risk no matter what.

Thank you, Angela. :)

Ellie--yes, of course. And good point about responsibility vs. blame. I guess I aim for fifty because it's my personal perception that sometimes people aim for 0. The truth will rarely be 50/50 but I think if I am for 50/50 I am not likely to cut myself more slack than I deserve.

Just today I posted something in which I knew that a good friend of mine would recognize herself . . . and probably feel hurt.

And I was nervous about my first published essay, because I recounted an inane remark by my mother-in-law that was an important part of the story but didn't exactly make her look very good.

Most of all, when my marriage was in a very bad place, I did blog about it. Paul didn't like that, and a couple of times he asked me to take a post down. On those instances, I looked hard at what I'd written. If I was speculating about his emotions, I'd take the post down. But if I was recounting something he did or said, I left it alone. My criteria there was: how much am I willing to have my friends and family know about this situation?

I figure that - unless something's told to me in confidence - what happens in my life is blog fodder.

I get very annoyed by blogs in which the husbands are always sweet and thoughful, the children are always angels. That's not real.

Of course, I can understand others putting their boundaries in different places. And it's my choice whether or not I want to read that type of writing; it's certainly not the truth I crave.

were. criteria were. criterium was. I suppose.

Wow - you bring up a big mirror to me and have forced me to look at more issues than my "nice" blog does. Thank you for that.

I remember I found you back in my early days of blogging and you made me think of alternates then.

Unfortunately I found too many people at once and one full moon culled indiscriminately - I am glad I found you again through Julie to think a bit more again.

Thank you thank you thank you. I spent some time this morning reading the first few Hump Day links and the resulting mandate to say only positive things about others and to talk mostly about yourself ... blech.

As you will recall, I signed on for the King Blog badge, but to me that has never meant concealing flaws or being uniformly positive. Maybe I just naively think that kindness and honesty can be combined?

And for some reason when I think about this issue I think mostly of posts people write venting about their doctors. The doctor-patient relationship can be a profoundly disempowering one (for the patient, I mean) and it seems to provoke the angriest posts. Maybe if I were a doctor I'd see this differently, but it seems as if writing unfairly about doctors is a mommy-blog rite of passage - a necessary and therapeutic safety valve for a highly emotional situation in which people are often made to feel stupid, embarrassed, or powerless.

Sarah Lynn, I remember those posts. I know I thought they were great and really appreciated them. It was so nice to see blog posts about a marriage that wasn't the glassy sheen of total perfection--and then it got fixed, too, unlike when I started posting about the imperfections in my marriage.

Thanks, jeanie. :)

BubandPie, you're welcome. And no, I don't think that's naive. I think kindness makes honesty more honest (that is, we're more likely to look fairly for our own contributions to a problem when we're not just dumping on someone) and honesty makes kindness more real. Kindness that's dishonest isn't really kind, IMO, just Nice.

Standing and applauding.
Well said.

Hey Andrea,
When I wrote my rapture film post a couple of weeks ago, I struggled with whether or not I should name the camp for real or whether I should create a false name for them. I decided that, fuck them, they deserved to be named and discredited and so I used their real name.

I do try to be more careful about what I say about my family but I hope that I don't pretend for a second that I have a perfect family life (ok, I said I did the other day but there was a context there). The fact that my husband is a work-a-holic who leaves a goodly sum of the parenting to me is evident in soooo many of my posts and it certainly pops up in comments all over hell's half-acre. The fact that my relationship to my siblings is dysfunctional but loving should be there too. It's just that I don't get a lot out of talking about the family dysfunction on the blog. It never seems to be the topic I feel compelled to write about on any given day.

Ug, there's more I could say about what I want my engaged readers to see vs what I am comfortable having complete strangers read but I don't quite have the words for it yet. Let's just say that when my hit stats tripled late last week, I had a sudden urge to become a lot more private on the blog even though I have said time and again that I value honesty and the depiction of the whole life in my writing and in that of others.

Wow.

When I started blogging, I thought it would be more like you were talking about. But then it wasn't. For me, it wasn't a decision so much to be nice, because I would so say all of this to my MIL's face, as a decision that I didn't want to make her,or other people who pissed me off, that important.

But it's nice to hear another side. I have to admit, it was getting a little boring. :)

As usual, ball into right field and over the fence. Audience cheering. Including me.

I suffer under the added burden of being socialized in the forties, when 'nice girl' behaviour was pounded into my head with a mallet. Most importantly, however, is that when I write something critical, I have to relook at it and try to even it out. Fifty/fifty. But mostly I sit on the stories that would hurt. Yep, makes me bland and this in turn makes me sad. But I can't change it.

Thanks for this, Andrea. It clarified what I was groping toward, big time.

Mad, I went through the same thing when I first started getting bigger readership numbers. Eventually I went back to being as honest as I had been, though a bit more careful with some identities, but I won't say it wasn't a struggle.

There's an essay in a writing book of mine called Teaching Griselda to Write that I might blog about because I think it says a lot of the same things, only better.

One of the things I most appreciate about this space is that it challenges me. Your writing (and that of a number of people who comment here) often pushes me to consider things more deeply, makes me aware of perspectives I hadn’t formerly considered. I believe that’s what writing at its best is supposed to do.

When I first began reading your blog, the brutal honesty of many of your posts literally left me breathless. I used to know you in real life and yet the Andrea I met here amazed me: you take risks in this place that at first astounded me because they were so unlike the young woman I used to know. You push your own boundaries in this place and in turn have pushed many of mine.

I think honesty is more important that nicety in a forum such as this. And I think it’s possible to tell your story in a manner which is constructive and considerate of other people. For me, that doesn’t mean making everyone out to sound like they’re perfect. That is no more believable than it is interesting.

This is your space and you have every right to tell your story from your perspective. If those of us who appear as members of the supporting cast don’t care for how we are represented, we can stop reading or create our own blogs.

I don’t often comment because I don’t have a blog of my own and I sometimes wonder about the fairness of participating in this community where I have so little accountability; you can’t simply click on my name to find out who I am and what I’m about. But I suppose that’s another post. Either way, you know that I’m here and that I’m interested in what you are saying.

Blogging, if nothing else, ought to reveal to us a depth of a person that we might not know about even if we know them in real life.

And that's my main point. By using a person to illustrate a point you run the risk of dehumanizing or one-dimensionalizing that person. (Call Websters, LOL.)

So, my main point, perhaps made too simplistically in my own post, was to always consider why not just how you intend to use a person within your narrative.

I don't know whether it will surprise you or not, but we do agree...you simply ran through the arguments I settled in my head before creating---a while back---my personal guidelines for myself when blogging.

To quote a response I have to add to my comments:

My entreaty is not for excluding discussion of others or sticking only to the sunshiney side of life.

I don't think ANYONE could accuse me or my blog of that LOL. I vent about politics, injustice, bad schooling, and annoying drivers who steal my parking spot in the zoo.

My guidelines are a reflection of my underlying desire to be respectful but also to question the goal and expectation of my narrative.

I gripe, I whine, I malinger on my blog. I've criticized the school and teacher for educational failings, used that personal story to launch broader discussion about how far our educational goals have fallen, ironically.

I discuss people, problems and so forth.

But.

I don't vilify.

Does that make sense, what I'm saying?

I guess it depends upon what you think your audience obligation is and why you blog.

Julie, I think we agree more than not on this point. But I think that for me, ultimately, my responsibility is to my writing and not to other people, as awful as that sounds. It is other people's responsiblity not to behave like jerks, not my responsibility not to make them look like jerks if they behave like one. Does that make sense?

Of course, painting someone as a one-dimensional Jerk is not good--it's also just as boring as painting someone as a one-dimensional Angel. Any portrait of anyone with a facet of truth to it will have both good spots and bad spots.

"I'm torn between what we as writers owe to the people in our lives vs. what we as writers owe in terms of honesty and truth to our readers, and also, if truth be told, what we as writers owe to ourselves."

I could not agree with this statement more. The people in my life have been winning, but it's often at the expense of my truth. The stories that I really want to tell. The demons that I really want to write out. It's only when the grief about my surgery is strong (like it is, for some reason, today) that I can get naked enough to say things that would make my family uncomfortable. Even when it's about me, I'm keenly aware that the person I am on the page, is not the person I present to them in real life. but that built in audience of friends and family makes going to the places I really want to go to prohibitive.

Wow.

"... need to sit on for a year or a decade before it can be told usefully "

I've found that my favourite posts to write, were ones where I'd been an a situation that was dizzying to me, but now -- with distance -- see and interpret things in an entirely different way.

I am awed by your unvarnished truths. Even with pseudo-anonymity I am crippled by my own fear. (The subject of a long, long series of posts!)

So very true.

Especially the last part. I actually told my boss (about 2 weeks ago, before she took extended leave) that the problem with her management style was that she was reacting and reacting....the team does X, when she thinks they should do Y, and then bam, she throws the book at the offender. Finds another punishment. I told her that she needs to pick a style, stick with it, be a pro-active manager, not a reactive manager.

It's a mind set that people need to have - don't react to life, that is a passive approach.

David Sedaris has a story about his sister telling him something, something horrible, and the way her face contorted with pain at this memory, and then she threatened him, because she knew he'd write it later. I think the way he handled it is brilliant though, because I can't recall if he actually shared her secret, or just the sharing of her secret. It's not crossing the line that makes the writing good, it's the distortion of where the line actually is....

Interesting post but really no different than writing in general. I mean, anyone who writes and thinks that their innermost fears, desires, anxieties and secrets are NOT going to show up spread amoung the pages (or even more blaring in absence) is living a wonderful paradise. The same is true for those around us, do they think we really "make up characters" - sure we "invent" them from a collection of what we know; how do we find a bitchy evil witch; well there is the way aunt Sal lays into her kids, that's good motivation in writing about how a character talks to people under her power.

And the same is true about blogs, I mean, I guess the question is: do you want to write the equivilant of Look Homeward Angel by T. Wolfe with it's brutal honesty or shall we pretend we are elsewhere and distance ourselves, wrap ourselves in cloaks (pretty damn transparent ones), and write the type of crap which always gets nominated for the booker prize but never wins.

Of course, I find it interesting that most of the successful writers have had to write under deadline, usually as journalists, and so the blog creates the same modern day mill, the gun at the head in which some days are golden and some are stinkers but both are at the bottom of the electronic birdfeeder by the next day (the next "blogcycle") and the blogger learns, if not how to write better, then maybe how to write consistantly?