Writing Bad

‘But M, you seem so nice,’ a writing colleague once said to me. ‘How do you come up with this stuff? Where does it come from?’

I shrugged. First of all, I’m not that nice. Secondly, being a writer is different from living life as a human being. The human is there to get along in the world, to be ‘nice’. The writer is there to get to the truth – no matter how unpalatable it may be. The two may never gel. But that’s okay.

Five years ago I was lucky enough to attend a writing workshop in Italy. I’d travelled across a wide ocean to write scenes from a childhood that I’d preciously found difficult to depict.

A small breakthrough came with a story called ‘The Turf Club’ about my veteran father.. The scene about his drinking can be read in the anthology Jewels of San Fedele. 

Set in an Australian pub, the scene takes place between my father and our young neighbour. While the story is true, I was not present at the event, so I needed to imagine what had happened. It was easier to narrate the story if I was at arm’s distance from it.

Prior to the class, I had no idea how to approach the subject of my father’s vulnerabilities, or even if I should. (Women – nice creatures that we are – might find such scenes more difficult to write than do male writers.)

But the memoirist’s job is to tell the truth. Or as Samuel Johnson says: ‘Books that don’t do any harm don’t give any pleasure.’ 

Kaylie Jones our teacher encouraged us not to fear the opinion of others ‘You mustn’t care what people think,’ she said. We had to silence our inner critic. Easy to say, but hard to do. Still, each morning she led us through a meditation that helped relieve us of the ‘fear’ burden. It seemed to work.

So, I raise a glass of chianti to ‘writing bad’. Here’s to finding ways to write about what matters to us. Be it nice or not.  Writing well, on the other hand, is the subject for a later post! Stay tuned!