I hate to go back on my own words. Unfortunately, sometimes it is required. In this case, I am offering a modest retraction of a statement I made in my January 20th post, "Next-Level Writing." In that post, I requested a little latitude because I was typing with a hand I recently injured, though it was not broken. Well, funny story: It's broken. The fifth metacarpal broke just above the hamate, and now I get to wear a brace for a few weeks and the upcoming CT explores for tendon damage. So, on that note, sorry I led you to think my hand had the proper number of pieces. My bad.
As I prepared for this apology, I did get to thinking about a related subject: the authenticity of our writing. Now, the whole concept of authenticity is pretty simple and doesn't require a lot of explaining. Simply put, you write that which is valid and reliable. This is mostly associated with journalism, memoirs, research pieces, and other factual things. However, for the creatives here, it holds a special place - something that might even be considered a higher seat than just the telling the truth.For those who write fiction, or sculpt poems, is there a degree of authenticity that must be held to? In the simplest terms, I would argue yes, they must be very authentic. By this, I mean they must convey feelings and emotions in a very sincere and unfiltered way. True, fiction allows you to create whoever you want and let them do whatever they care to do, and poetry doesn't even have to capture any specific point in reality. However, if you want to communicate an idea, concept, theme, or emotion, you must bring it to the page without pretext, decorations, special lighting, PhotoShop filters or anything else. It must be the unvarnished truth. It must be authentic.
Here's a simple example. Every now and then I refer to a very good friend of mine who died when I was in college. He was only 25, so this was a lot to handle for me even though my friend had basically been on death-watch for four years after receiving his diagnosis. Nevertheless, his death hit me hard and I tried to use this great tool of writing to process all the horrible feelings that comes with the grieving process. However, writing didn't seem to work very well, and I couldn't figure out why. I poured out all my anger, frustration, and sadness onto the page, yet there I was, still in pain.
Eventually, I shared these writings with a friend and she said exactly what I expected, but then some more. She felt my pain, my anger, my grief - that was all there. However, she wanted to know why I was holding back. Everything I wrote was from grief, but there was so much I wasn't writing about yet. I wasn't getting to the areas that were still too painful to touch. I wasn't bringing out the feelings that troubled me, so the things I did write felt very much unauthentic because they were only pieces of a greater story.
Writing with authenticity is incredibly difficult. Hemingway implied it was easy - "Just sit in front of the typewriter and bleed" or something like that - and let those things come out. However, this takes practice, especially when we write about those things close to our core. If I write about my parents, a part of me might feel very uncomfortable that they would be offended or upset, even from beyond the grave, if I mentioned a simple, brutal truth such as my father's utter inability to make liver and onions remotely edible. Writing about my darker feelings might be tough because I'm not ready to face more than a couple at a time. And Heaven help me when I write stories about my close friends who are still alive and might be offended if I mention which one is the most annoying when they're drunk (she knows who she is).
The closest we can come to authentic writing is to write with only ourselves in mind, focused solely on the purpose of expressing everything in its purest form. We will discover a lot about ourselves and just how we see the world, but the purity of what we write will communicate these truths to the reader. Regardless of whether the reader knows us, they will feel they are reading something genuine and honest. That's the only thing you need to create.
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