Who gets veto power in your writing?
Raise your hand if you’ve ever stopped yourself from writing about someone because you’re afraid of what they’ll think if they read it.
I’m getting excited for the inaugural Book Club for Writers meeting on Sunday, January 29! For our first meeting, we’re discussing Melissa Febos’s book Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative.
The part of this book I like most is the chapter on writing about other people. The ethics involved in including real people in writing is a concern that many writers face. Over and over again, my students and writer friends ask me, “But what is [insert name here] going to think if they know that I’m writing about them?”
Too often, I notice writers—myself included!—stopping ourselves from writing something because we’re afraid that writing about someone will lead to backlash.
I can assure my students all the livelong day that our workshop is a safe space, that no one is going to share their writing outside of our group, and that they never have to let that person read what they’ve written if they don’t want to. But these things can only take us so far. So many of us write with the hope that our writing will, indeed, see the light of day.
That’s where Melissa Febos’s wisdom really impacts me. She’s an excellent person to write on the subject of writing about other people—her first book, Whip Smart: The True Story of a Secret Life, is all about her time as a professional dominatrix and heroin addict. Turns out, her experience implicating others in her writing is an invaluable resource for other writers.
Here’s thing that stood out to me when I read Body Work: when she finished editing her first book, Febos sent the manuscript to every member of her immediate family.
“I suggested that they wait until they’d finished reading it before we next spoke. I made no promises to change anything.”
Febos goes on to recount the moment her mom called her the day after she received the manuscript. She’d stayed up all night reading the book—her daughter’s detail-rich accounts of sex and drugs. “I’m so proud of you,” her mom said. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever read. It’s wonderful.”
Febos also describes who has veto power in her writing. For her, that power goes to one person and one person only: her wife. Here’s her explanation:
“She is not threatened by my version of events. Partly, because she benefits from all the previous lessons I have learned; I am a more conscientious writer than I have ever been. Partly, because as a writer she understands that a difference in individual truths is not always a conflict. So long as we don’t try to speak for each other, there is room in our house for more than one story.”
I am so grateful for the generosity Melissa Febos extended to the writing world by writing Body Work. It is the perfect balance of practicality and inspiration.
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Last Year’s Best Books
In case you missed it: I ended 2022 by rounding up my Top 10 favorite new books of the year! See the whole list here.
Thanks for reading this issue of Lonely Victories! I’m looking forward to reading and writing together throughout 2023.
💛 Hurley
What a coincidence, I just finished reading Body Work about an hour before reading your newsletter!I came across it at an opportune time since I’d been dealing with some trepidation around writing about trauma in my memoir book project, for fear that it could be construed as trauma porn. I wrote a bit about that, as well as my reluctance to refer to myself as an artist in my latest newsletter: https://www.lyle.blog/p/is-this-a-piece-of-art. Febos’ book has been a huge help for me and I snapped many pics of passages that struck a chord with me.
No, it’s never stopped me! What are my friends and associates but grist for the mill? Sometimes, I do try to spare some the embarrassment of their exploits - I’m making fast cash off of - by changing their names. Take my latest heroine, Wurley Hinkler: writer and academic by day, righter of wrongs by night as she fights against the patriarchy which seeks crush the dreams of women everywhere! I sent the first couple of chapters to my publisher - after getting permission to use the real world individual’s likeness by trading her husband a set of bass strings! Now, we’ve completely dropped the book idea and gone straight to Netflix: The future of storytelling! Yes, it’s possible some aspects of Wurley’s years in Middle School might come across as embarrassing, but they’ll only help support her true acts of somewhat clumsy heroism which occur as the story progresses! (Sadly, Millie Bobby Brown turned down the lead role! Something about, “I’m never letting anyone near me again with a curling iron again!”) Well, it will work out. There’s always out of work Disney actresses available! To reiterate my point, as writers how many friends do we really have? What use are they if not grist for our creative mills? Let’s face it, they don’t understand us anyway! Revenge is a dish best served in print!