In my memoir classes, one of the major questions that comes up again and again from students is the question of how to write about difficult true parts of our lives. In every single class, people ask a variation of this question.
They are worried about what people close to them will think. They are afraid to cause anyone discomfort. They worry about how they will write about real people in their lives, friends and family and even people they no longer speak to.
Many of my students are writing about the hardest things they've ever gone through, the worst things that ever happened to them. Their questions are valid. They are questions I've posed myself as I put together my first book Mother Noise and maybe even more so with my second book that I'm working on now. There's no easy answer and it's part of the writing process to work through this dilemma. We all find ways to make peace with our own solutions to this issue eventually and the decisions we make to find that peace vary from writer to writer. My advice always starts with write what you need to write and worry about the rest later. We can't be worried about this as we draft our work; we can always adjust that first draft later. And the second and third and fourth drafts. Be brave for now, I say.
And this brings me to a current item from the nightmare news cycle we've all been living with: Kristi Noem.
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