Writing Ego

Pens & Markers—Photo by Hello I'm Nik 🎞 on Unsplash

Dr. Natalie Frank’s Medium post was timely. How Do You Decide What Personal Information to Publicly Share in Your Writing?

“Putting the private ‘you’ out there for public evaluation can make you feel very vulnerable, yet common experiences and opinions matter.” 

from How Do You Decide What Personal Information to Publicly Share in Your Writing? By Dr. Natalie Frank in Medium

Medium has these sub-groups–like sub-Reddits–and Dr. Frank’s is “Mental Gecko” which makes no sense yet fits her professional specialty in an ironical way–as Professor Lambeau employed for extra–er–irony in Good Will Hunting.  BTW, if you missed the Reddit ad bragging about GameStop during the Superbowl, it’s done in full bore geek humor. 

According to Dr. Frank, her privacy Rubicon (to employ a serious non sequitur) came with Trump’s disputing the November election results. Everyone has their breaking point–mine came four years before. But here’s the part of her piece that caught my attention:

“I first began really struggling with this question [of privacy on the internet] more and more during the chaos of the previous year [2020]. Before about a year ago, I was very careful about what I put online. I wrote exclusively in the third person about material that could be researched and which wasn’t about me. I saw being a writer and a blogger as two distinct things, with the former being more respected in the eyes of the public. I viewed blogging as writing whatever came to mind that day which was expressed through free writing.

“I have learned over time that these two things are not mutually exclusive, and if anything, those who blog and do it well have the harder job compared to analyzing and integrating what is already out there. Even then, though, I was reluctant to put anything about myself online. Part was from the understanding that once something is out there it is impossible to completely get rid of every trace of it. Then there was the fear of negative evaluation.”

from How Do You Decide What Personal Information to Publicly Share in Your Writing? By Dr. Natalie Frank in Medium

Being gun-shy with social media generally, my approach to writing the blog has been a work in progress. Unlike Dr. Frank, I let go of worrying about privacy awhile back. See, I subscribe to the adage, ‘write what you know’ and figure if I don’t know myself by now, it’s not happening–so I write what I know–sorta. “No guts no glory” and “no pain, no pain,” along those lines. Seriously, one does want a hint of color as Nathan Lane said to Robin Williams… The trick is to keep babbling. Like this.

As for worrying about what one puts out there, all you need is to never make a mistake. How easy is that? 

A friend mentioned in a phone conversation that he’d read Free Spirit, or as he called it my piece on “Bill’s long ago love life,” implying I’m too old to have one now. In response to the same story another friend said no woman had ever reached out to him after twenty years, like a backhanded compliment to my studly-ness, which we both knew was far from the truth. The fact Ilene had bothered to call out of the blue brought this emotional surge [1] that she’d reached out to me! I was blown away–she had that effect. Then to find out after twenty years what we’d seen in each other hadn’t been misplaced. Impressed the hell out of me is all I’m saying.

It took about a month to write that story, working around what could come across as titillation and still highlight a now five-decade-old memory, hoping that it might entertain. Being a mostly private person, doing Free Spirit was a challenge. And I did ask for Ilene’s permission, promising to omit all but the G-rated parts. Admittedly, it was harder to remember the G-rated parts.

Elana’s Letters was another story that stepped outside the privacy norms I’d set for the blogs–and in this case I confessed to changing her name because we had lost track of each other. Toward the end of our long running correspondents begun as kids, we came close to meeting once or twice in college, but sadly never did.  So I had no way of asking permission. That story is a cautionary tale, remarkable because her letters tell the entire story–evolving from a pert, cheerful fifteen-year-old to her latter, darker struggle deciding who she would become as a woman—and that’s where the trail ended. Elana still loved her family as she was walking away from them. Discovering the boxed set of her letters was too tempting a gift, I’ll admit. A poignant gift, but a gift nonetheless.

The friends and lovers of writers over history have taken fallout for being part of the story; that’s a well-trod literary path. Worse, when it happens, is their humiliation, such as Mary Shelley’s chasing after one of literature’s most self-centered celebrity poets. Faulted being caught up in scandal can be a form of abuse.

My attempts at life drawing were another form of abuse, more of the charcoal pencil variety. 

However, one can draw parallels to male artists painting nudes, and a feminist argument that the entire history of Western art is misogynistic. To which I offer Wendy Lesser’s examination, His Other Half: Men Looking at Women Through Art. When Lesser’s book was first published, Anne Hollander’s book review described it thus: 

“Her discussion of Degas's nudes is very moving… especially since other essays on these pictures often insist on casting the subjects as victims of Degas's gaze, forced by him into unstable poses so that he can somehow obscurely despise them in their privacy. Ms. Lesser insists instead on Degas's total identification with the natural bodily behavior of his bathers. She finds him wholly at one with their unobserved solitude, able himself to feel the backward pull of the hairbrush wielded by the maid, to feel the comforting rub of the rough towel behind the neck, the pleasurable bending of knees and the elastic flexing of tight back muscles. Her reaction [Lesser’s] is tactile; she is feeling the pictures more than seeing them, and she makes a good case for Degas's intending that very effect, as if to illustrate his own empathy with these female physical moments. She demonstrates, moreover, that some critics of extreme schools can see so many sociosexual clues and signs in the picture as to lose emotional touch with bather or painter.”

from the 1991 NY Times article Where’s the Rest of Them? By Anne Hollander

Not to be outdone by art critics (having by this time moved well beyond shy opinions) I posted  If Manet Was Modern, Titian Was What? on Medium and received a number of positive responses – probably because of the illustrated naked women.

So it gets close to this blog’s title: too many tales of male writers as egoists for my comfort. The biggest irony is I had no desire to write a memoir before starting the blog–what was the point?–like facing yourself in the mirror every morning. But ironical as that may be, quite a number have been drawn from what I’ve witnessed–or lived. As Dr. Frank suggests, finding ways to step away from being front and center to take an observer’s position isn’t the easiest trick.  

The moral hazard of writing a blog is how many ‘I’s end up in the piece. You can count them.

Then there was the entire series of blogs written about the libraries designed over my career–the ones I had professional photos to describe–and several fortunate trips to France, Italy and Japan with photos I’m not ashamed of showing. The website is supposedly about writing, architecture and photography, so at least I didn’t lie. 

But here’s the thing (Biden joke)–we’re all more alike than not, and the purpose of writing is threading together things to connect us, finding commonalities that register with others, maybe make them smile, or at least nod their heads, uh huh.

And the fiction is replete with personal elements. Saint Tropez Sketch is a novella that questions when lust crosses over to love, or ruins it before it gets there–a theme that’s been in my head since I was a punk. Its companion short story, Edge of an Island, set in Capri, follows a dream I woke from–first remembering a day trip D and I took to the island—then recalling a woman who broke my heart in an entirely different place and time. I woke with the image of an old man gazing out at the Mediterranean from the overlook we’d stood by, and had to figure the rest of the story from there. You can always disguise the personal in fiction, and drop in a payback or two in the process.  I suppose if you’re a psychologist like Dr. Frank, it might feel uncomfortable, but if you can’t steal stuff from your own past, you might as well take up croquet.

Writing about politics had pissed off a few people, for which I can only say ‘sorry,’ because unlike some, I’m not trying to deliberately annoy–aggravating is a waste of breath. So I work to restrain from ranting, hoping to make a good point or two and get the hell out. 

Months ago–a long time before the election and what followed–the friend with whom I began this story had sent an angry email over a post of mine about Trump, and it brought me up short. He and I aren’t so far apart as that statement might suggest. Either it was true we two perfectly matched the national political divide, or I hadn’t chosen my words as carefully as I might. Poor writing isn’t something to take pride in–nor are rants. 

One of the most explosive subjects this past year has been racism. I don’t say ‘race’ because I’ve learned there’s no such fixed thing. Big picture, race is a momentary phenomena, seeing as we all came out of Africa, bumping into Neanderthals along the way. Though even posts about racism–in the current climate–need to avoid singing to the choir or it’s just venting and stroking an ego.

YB Yeats’s admonition in The Second Coming applies:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

first verse from The Second Coming published on The Poetry Foundation website

The last two lines are famous–and Yeats’s truest: The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity. At present we seem to be reliving the times Yeats was writing about. Though even regarding the racial divide in this country, I write from my life. Class of ’69, Edmunds High is one of those. 

Is writing just another ego trip–as it used to be called? Often it is, and I doubt many writers are ego-less. Saints are said to be, but not writers. Do male writers fall into that trap easier than their female counterparts? Dunno.

Writing is like sculpting stone stroke at a time attempting to carve a clear featured face. Or more truthfully, scratching after one until a semblance of Intellect–and sometimes grace–escapes.  

[1] “Surge:  C. fig. (or, more freq., in fig. context) in reference to feelings, influences, actions, events, etc.: Impetuous onset or agitated movement.” from the Oxford English Dictionary