in medias res

Writing Cojones

Every year (for a whole three years now), I make my students read an essay by Gail Godwin called “The Watcher at the Gates” from our first year reader - On Writing: A Process Reader. It’s one of several that I secretly subtitle: “Writers’ Neuroses Unveiled!”

In the essay, Godwin talks about our brutal inner critic who hinders us by providing a running commentary on our writing. I told my students that it’s my conservative grandparents who clucked at my pierced ears. When it comes to this blog, my students are my watchers. Some of my best stories, I’m terrified to tell. I already feel too vulnerable after facebook and myspace. They know too much. The healthy distance between teacher and student that I’d like to imagine exists is even more tenuous now.

I could probably also group my co-workers in this category. My work stories can’t show up here. When I think about telling a story, I mentally trace a path from the people in the story to my blog (the guy at work who is on facebook, which lists my blog, and so on…) Church people either. I can talk about close friends and family who wouldn’t mind showing up in my blog, but those aren’t really my best stories. I have a friend who was outed to her office by a nosy, googling co-worker. I’m a little traumatized by her experience.

So, dear reader, it is not that I don’t have any stories to tell; it’s that I’m still neurotic about hurting people’s feelings. Maybe I’m still too raw from my own wounds. But I am so careful, that my stories all have safety hedges of ambiguity. That doesn’t make for good story-telling.

For example – I have fabulous stories from my two half-summers working on the sailboat in Chicago [see above], but we are still good friends with the owners. My stories aren’t scathing or offensive; they contain a mix of good and bad. I’m scared to write the bad, so the stories remain unwritten until I one day forget them.

Here I sit, sans tell-able stories. Maybe it’s time to take some of the advice I give my students. Maybe it’s time to grow some story-telling cojones while I dance the line between the truth and full-disclosure.

posted by tara @ 11:38 PM