I feel as though I have to post this, in light of some recent conversations with the people in my life that I have written about.
Being a writer is a tough, tough thing. For starters, there are a million words and sentences bouncing around in my head. I speak too much. I don't speak in short enough sentences. Employers hate this, my parents hate it even more. Ex-boyfriends probably hate it the most. I talk too much, I write too much, I reveal too much. I am too much.
It is also difficult to navigate the grey areas: There's a fine line between writing about heartbreak and talking shit about your ex. It isn't easy to write about your family without revealing any skeletons in the closet. You can't possibly describe the worst, lowest moment of your career without making yourself look like a jackass.
If you want to write, and really, really write, you have to be honest. You don't have to be mean or purposefully negative, but you do have to be honest.
If every writer refused to tell a story because it would make another person look bad, or hurt that person, we wouldn't have stories. We wouldn't have A Million Little Pieces or Wild or Wishful Drinking. Without Darth Vader, there is no Star Wars. And that's something that I'm sure none of us could live without.
Therefore:
- I do not apologize for the things that I have written about. They are stories that are important to me. I would like to preserve my right to free speech.
- I do not aim to vilify ANYONE in any of these stories. I do not mean to martyr myself either. If those things happen, it is completely unintentional. I promise. I'm not here to out you as an asshole to your mom and our 3 mutual friends on Facebook.
- I have written stories about men that I have dated, former employers & coworkers, and my own family. I've also written shitty listicles that mean nothing to me, and those aren't the pieces that I'm proud of. I am proud of the pieces where I feel that I am being honest and intentional.
- I also recognize that I am no where near as popular, talented, or publicized as James Frey, and that it is a little pretentious to write my own Oprah interview (minus Oprah) about this. I am small time. I have 21 blog followers. I don't pretend for a minute that anything that I'm saying matters to anyone else in the grand scheme of things. If the world was going to explode and the public had to vote which important stories to bury in a steel time capsule for future generations, none of those picked would be links to my posts on Thought Catalog.
All of this being said, thank you for reading. Truly. It means the world to me.
