On Giving Away Your Secrets in Fiction

Despite all the personal posts I've been making recently, I am actually kind of a private, internalized person, by nature. I think I give the impression of being unfeeling sometimes, particularly in awkward situations with family, because I don't think I ever really learned quite how to express myself in such a way that didn't leave me feeling vulnerable. I think that was the problem: you can't express your emotions without feeling vulnerable, and the problem is, I needed to learn how to accept that feeling of vulnerability and use it.

I'm kind of living in a backwards fashion, in that I'm learning to accept that vulnerability via my writing rather than in my, you know, actual day to day life. A great story, I think, has to give away a part of ourselves that leaves us feeling vulnerable. Maureen McHugh said something along those lines recently, and I nodded to myself in agreement as I read it. This is another sign of growth as a writer, I think.

I write a lot of fluff, a lot of entertaining stuff that's meant to be amusing but not meant to make you feel anything other than a sugar-high or a slight caffeine buzz. My first Interzone is a good example of that. And I'm proud of that story, at the same time that I am kind of ashamed that I didn't make the story resonate better than I could have. I don't think I really started putting any of my emotional core into my writing until I wrote "The Yeti Behind You," a story that will be in the Fantasy sampler. The experience of writing that story was painful, embarrassing, and ultimately, the most cathartic writing experience I've had yet.

It scared me, and because of the fear, I haven't been able to get back into that place since. To get into that space, you have to really get inside your emotional space, and well, my emotional space is still a bit tattered and messy. I have ideas for stories I want to write, drawing from this new, messed up emotional core. But the idea of putting myself out there like that, of taking something that hurts from within me and permanently putting it on display... it causes me to balk. It's one of the primary reasons I haven't been writing. I have stories I have to get out that I don't want to let go of yet.

We writers constantly battle the urge to be self-conscious. It's hard to put the thought of the audience out of our minds while we work, and sometimes, we shouldn't put that thought out of our minds. The trick is learning when to use it, and when to put it aside. I'm still working on that. Once I have it figured it, I have a feeling that my stories are going to do things they haven't ever done before. I'm scared and excited about the idea. I'm just sad that it took such great loss for me to realize what I have to do.