Confide in Me

The art of inventing the truth

Photo by Anh Tuan T on Unsplash

---

Hi Everyone,

My last post on confiding the truth will not let me go. It’s inspiring me as I revise my own memoir, and it’s prompting me to share more with you about the imperative for ruthless self-scrutiny that underscores all serious writing, whether the “self” is the narrator of a memoir or the protagonist of a fiction. In the first case, it’s the duty of the memoirist to peel back the many layers of self-denial and avoidance to reveal why the story truly matters. In the second, it’s the duty of the author to peel back the layers of the character’s denial and avoidance to reveal the true motivations and machinations going on below the story’s surface.

Of all the issues I struggle with as a writer, this mandate to confide — not just to tell “my side of the story” but to penetrate my own defenses, to cross-examine myself within the story, is perhaps the thorniest. This seems to be the case with my students, too. So I’m going to keep going on this topic.

Consider Sunday’s post Part I of this conversation:

Is Your Novel or Memoir Confessing Trauma, or Confiding Truth?

I’ll continue with another long post this weekend.

In the meantime, today’s mid-week inspiration for paid subscribers offers food for thought on the nature of confidences from the late masters William Zinsser and Virginia Woolf

---

---