from Sylvia Plath and me

Peggy’s prompt--020410


Quote for Today:

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~ Sylvia Plath

In some ways, I personify the quote from Sylvia Plath. I write about “everything”—cancelled checks, childhood memories, the contents of my wallet, chemotherapy, my doubts, my cats, my fears, my high moments, and on and on. But what I don’t do, because I don’t have the outgoing guts to do it, is post them all to my blog. I’m very selective about what goes “public.” I could never write an interesting memoir, because I’d censor myself in every other paragraph.

For example, I was once, for an extended period, a participant in a therapy group. This group was noted for “exposing” the parts of our past that have shaped our current view of ourselves, and was often pretty intense. After months of this, and having talked about my father, my mother, my husband, my son in more intimate detail than I have ever disclosed before, I realized that I was getting down to the core of my being, and I announced to the group, “well, I guess I’m going to have to talk about sex next.” And then I was saved by being diagnosed with breast cancer, and that took precedent, and then I dropped out of the group for financial reasons and there you are. I’ve skirted that issue again.

I read other people’s memoirs, and am fascinated by them, and yet I wonder how their revelations have affected the other people mentioned in the memoir, and I think how unfair, unkind it would be to those who chose to keep those memories private. My outgoing guts disappear in empathy for others.

I suppose that’s why people write novels. If they occasionally include fictionalized versions of their own life, well, who’s to know what is fiction and what is memoir? In my writing group, we are exhorted to keep confidential what we hear other writers have written, because “it may or may not be true.” And spreading fiction might be even more damaging than the truth.

Which is to say, I identify more with the withholding of private information than with the broadcasting of personal “secrets” via memoir, Sylvia Plath notwithstanding.