There’s nothing like healthy doses of hate mail, from people you care about, to get the blood flowing. Yeah, the whining I’m doing about life with my father is somewhat pathetic, but in the purest sense of the word. There is a pathos here, and I am allowed to contemplate it, especially during this time in my life. There’s a tricky balance to maintain here: how do I speak the truth and work through memory without hurting people I love?
This isn’t the movies. I don’t want to sit in front of my father, him all clueless and rough, and scream at him about how he’s failed me as a father. Then tell him I’m gay. I don’t want any of that drama, but reading over the entries, what is essentially a series of rough drafts, I can see that my first impulse as a writer is to pour things out. All of this is natural.
It’s the balance memoir writers have to negotiate all the time. When I was in graduate school, I helped initiate a change in how writing workshops were done. Initially, the workshop groups were separated into distinct “fiction” and “creative nonfiction” groups. Sitting in an exclusively nonfiction group turned my stomach and made me as resentful as the two students who have been sending me hate mail the past week or so. I didn’t want to hear the other memoir-writer’s problems with man-hating, or coming out, or past abuse, and yes, I thought they were pathetic. I didn’t have enough compassion for them, and it was a mistake.
I wanted to be with the fiction writers, mixed in with people who wrote thinly-veiled nonfiction. The problem was that they didn’t want the likes of me, either. They didn’t want to hear my problems. What I came to realize is that I wanted to be in the fiction workshop group because I could hide there. You can’t hide if you’re in a group that writes exclusively nonfiction.
So the question is: How do memoir writers express themselves without their words sounding overwrought and pathetic? With me, it’s still under negotiation. But I’m not hiding anymore.
15 Comments
So does this mean you’re going to go upstairs and clean your office and actually write again?
Ugh, more hate mail.
I’m not your student. Just another writer that stumbled upon your site. You need to learn to hear good and bad remarks about your writing, otherwise you will never progress to the author you want to become. The truth is that you are going to have just as many people hate your work as there are that love it. That’s life Frankie. I’m going to give you some advice. Your writing is boring….bleak nothingness. If you want to publish that novel, and I have faith that you can succeed, you need to spice it up a bit baby. It seems like you are trying to damn hard to write every sentence. I can just picture you sitting behind your spectacles writing and rewriting every single sentence untill it’s so packed with imagery it may explode. Maybe you need to chill out, drink a scotch or two and stop trying to be that depressed, tortured author who may become famous after a dramatic suicide. People have enough stress in their lives without listening to yours as well. I’m not telling you to remove your sad stories completely, but christ Frank, your life cannot be that bad. I’m sure you will simply delete this comment and forget about it, much like you seem to do with all your problems, but I am just offering some advice…writer to writer. I’m not trying to hurt your already fragile self image. And if it’s any consolation to you, I suck at running.
Thanks for the comment. I’m pretty good at taking negative comments about my writing, and I do struggle over every sentence whenever I do sit down and work. I don’t write often enough. Comment freely from now on. I won’t hold them back.
tormented memoirists are supposed to be really FUNNY. Especially if the torment came in the form of an ethno-American, religious, or vacuous suburban childhood. Since I believe you have scored a hat trick, your writing should be fuckin’ hysterical.
Frank I’m a fan of your “bleak boring” writing. I am also thankful that you sweat every sentence. `Cause there’s not much worse than verbosity. I think Elizar missed your point while he/she was making his/her speech. That said, I really enjoyed the fiction/non workshops. I believe that fiction is the truth clothed in lies and memoir is lies clothed in the truth. Actually, isn’t it all a fiction because it’s all subjective — we can never lose the writer’s point of view. Okay, yeah, you were probably hiding.
Thanks, Meg. I reacted to her comment on “Big Brother.” It wasn’t about my writing at all.
If it is that draining to read, why read it at all? I don’t see any of you putting yourselves out there like that. Such denigration is uncalled for, especially when the article was an acknowledgement of his own faults.
Hey, I don’t comment much here (unless it’s about fights resulting from attempted insemination), but for whatever it might be worth, I don’t see why you focusing on yourself and your reactions to events in your life is such a bad thing considering this is your website for you to write about what you want. I don’t have an opinion on whether you should have certain thoughts about your father or not or if you’re being unfair to him or whatever, because I have no fucking clue, but you’re a good writer and your stories about your life and running internal monologue are often really engaging.
Thanks, Molls. The people who come here and read regularly always have something constructive to say, whether it’s positive or negative. The others just go away eventually.
Are you gay? Because that would explain SO much.
No, sorry, not gay. You still have to blame yourself.
Definitely NOT gay…no complaints there.
I’m adding one item to my “things to be thankful for” list–that it took eleven posts until someone brought up the “gay” thing. I thought that was an excellent way of expressing how contrived the hollywood confrontation can be to people who live in the real world.
Write more, Frank, and write about more. With your skills, you shouldn’t waste it all on attempts at catharsis.
About your latest post (the one about how the girl in your elementary school smelled): What are you scared about? I only started reading this blog recently, because of the posts about writing, but some of the things you say are really disturbing. Also, why are comments closed? It seems like you’re saying, “I want you to read my stuff, but I don’t care what you have to say about it.” Is that true?
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