authenticity

In the article I quoted in Monday’s post, Elissa Altman shared this earthy bon mot from writer Dorothy Allison, which is now officially one of my all-time favorite quotes about writing:

If you’re going to write a character as an asshole, you’d better be ready to write yourself the same way.

Memoirists and others who may be tempted to include real-life assholes as villains or corpses in their writing, take note.

You might recall Allison as one of the examples of messy writers in my posts on authenticity. While Bastard Out of Carolina wasn’t strictly a memoir, it’s well-noted as a fictionalized version of Allison’s childhood. Her fictional stand-in, protagonist Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright, wasn’t exactly an asshole, but she was confused, complicated, rebellious, reckless, and vengeful. Allison didn’t hold back on revealing her contradictions, even if she risked losing her readers.

It doesn’t get more authentic than that.

The fact that it reminds me of one of my favorite John Waters quotes is a bonus.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

A funny thing about writing blogs: they tend to hit similar topics all around the same time. An article about tropes over here is followed by two articles discussing tropes someplace else. One blogger writes about controlling time in your narrative, and two more follow within a week or so.

I’m not saying they swipe from one another – though they might – but it’s a funny coincidence, and very noticeable when you follow as many blogs as I do. This past week or so, three separate bloggers hit on my favorite topic – the importance of centering yourself in your creative work.

If my word wasn’t enough, here are theirs:

In a post on her blog, Tiffany Yates Martin uses Monica Lewinsky as an example of someone who had to reclaim her story after she was defined by outside sources. We all know what happened and what people said and thought about her, and yet, in later life, Lewinsky fought back to tell the story from her perspective and to define herself on her own terms.

TYM relates this to our writing, in that our characters are also pushed around by forces outside their control. We call that backstory and plot and character development – all those things we don’t want to experience in the real world, but are critical to story.

But she also connects this to our creativity. How much and how often do we allow ourselves to be defined by an editor, agent, or publisher, or a peer critique group? Are we only as good as our last rejection or review or sales report? I know published authors often fret about writing in a new genre, afraid their readers won’t “accept” it.  Pfft.

TYM extends this to our social media personas and even our personal lives, but succinctly asks “Whose definition of who I am matters but my own?”

Whose view of my creative work matters more than mine, as its creator? I don’t mean that we believe it’s always perfect—but it always holds a foundational value even if it isn’t to everyone’s taste or standards.

And the benefits of being herself? “What it’s given me is a confidence and contentment inside my own skin that I lacked for much of my teens, twenties, thirties…even into my forties,” TYM says. “It’s given me agency and autonomy in my life, and a sense of self that, while not always unshakable (those inner demons still swarm out of their cave from time to time and undercut my confidence), is a much more solid foundation than it used to be. It has given me my voice as an artist—and I’m including my editing in that too, as much a creative art as any of the writing I do.”

Hear, hear.

Two other articles popped up around this time. In a post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Laura Stanfill urges writers to always trust their instincts when it comes time to choose a project. “Write for yourself,” she says. “Not for an agent who doesn’t know you exist (yet). Not for a publisher whose taste you can only guess from a distance. Not for your writing group because they’re writing a certain genre or style.”

And in a post on Writers in the Storm, Julie Glover identifies three things you should never let anyone – peer group, beta reader, editor, publisher, friend – mess with.

• Your Voice. One of the greatest potential detriments to a writer’s voice is the peer critique group or the writing workshop. In addition to helping us hone craft, our peers may suggest alterations to voice or theme. Writers often find themselves writing to please the room, rather than themselves. And college workshops tend to produce writers who sound too similar to the half dozen favorite authors of the class advisor.
• Your Process. Do you write every day or once a week? Do you outline or discovery write? Do you edit as you go? “The right process is whatever works for you,” Glover writes. “By all means, try out different ways of writing, but once you figure out your process, stick to it. If you know what works for you, own it and protect it.”
• Your Theme. The central focus of your story is why you wrote it in the first place. Your readers may interpret it differently, but don’t let anyone tell you what your story means to you or convince you to alter it to something less personal.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

I found this psychological tidbit as I gathered material for last month’s series on Authentic Writing. I couldn’t find a place for it, so this short post can serve as something of an epilogue.

To be authentic, we have to know ourselves. We have to be honest about our values, thoughts, beliefs, successes, and failings.

But…are you honest?

Most of us would say yes, and I think that’s accurate. Even if we have secrets Batman couldn’t beat out of us, we know who we are inside. Writers tend to self-examine. But also, humans are adept at burying memories, denying bad thoughts, and avoiding taboo subjects.

Enter the Sackheim-Gur test. In the 1970s, psychologists Ruben Gur and Harold Sackeim developed a series of embarrassing questions intended to gauge how well people lie to themselves. In their experiment, Sackheim and Gur sought to demonstrate that humans need a certain level of self-deception to engage in specific behaviors or achieve their goals. For example, a follow-on study (Self-Deception and its Relationship to Success in Competition, Joanna Starek, 1991) found that swimmers who were better at self-deception won more often.

It’s a plausible theory. Fake it til you make it, right? A bit of self-deception could turn I can’t into I can.

Here’s the test. The questions range from mild to possibly embarrassing to taboo subjects. Can you answer them? Even the ones that make you squirm a little?

Questions:

On a scale of 1 – 7, with 7 being the strongest possible agreement:

1. Have you ever felt hatred toward either of your parents?
2. Do you ever feel guilty?
3. Does every attractive person of the opposite sex turn you on?
4. Have you ever felt like you wanted to kill somebody?
5. Do you ever get angry?
6. Do you ever have thoughts that you don’t want other people to know that you have?
7. Do you ever feel attracted to people of the same sex?
8. Have you ever made a fool of yourself?
9. Are there things in your life that make you feel unhappy?
10. Is it important to you that other people think highly of you?
11. Would you like to know what other people think of you?
12. Were your parents ever mean to you?
13. Do you have any bad memories?
14. Have you ever thought that your parents hated you?
15. Do you have sexual fantasies?
16. Have you ever been uncertain as to whether or not you are homosexual?
17. Have you ever doubted your sexual adequacy?
18. Have you ever enjoyed your bowel movements?
19. Have you ever wanted to rape or be raped by someone?
20. Have you ever thought of committing suicide in order to get back at someone?

Did any of those questions make you uncomfortable? If someone asked one in public, would you decline to answer or become evasive?

This is just an exercise, and those specific questions may not be relevant to your writing. My point is that authenticity asks us to be honest in response to tough questions, even when – or especially when – we are answering only to ourselves.

Humans are complicated. We can hate someone we are supposed to love. We can become aroused by something we should consider unappealing. We question ourselves and sometimes may not like the answers.

These questions might not trigger anything for your writing, but challenge yourself to craft and answer similar questions about yourself and your characters. The more uncomfortable you feel, the closer you are to uncovering an authentic human experience.

And I guarantee you aren’t the only person thinking it.

In the interest of full disclosure : 7 5 1 6 7 7 7 5 5 5 1 6 6 7 6 1 4 2 3 7

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

As my final word on authenticity for now, I leave you with this clip from an interview with the magnificent Orson Welles.

Q: You got away with enormous technical advances, didn’t you?
A: Simply by not knowing that they were impossible.

“I didn’t know there were things you couldn’t do.”

What a gift that is, an invitation to forget what you know, what you’ve been warned against doing, and to approach your creative work with a fresh gaze.

Whatever you want to do, no matter how implausible, pretend that you don’t know it’s impossible, and make a plan to get it done.

Do it anyway.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve talked about being authentic on the page and what it means to me, shared examples of writers who put it all out there, and examined ways to figure out what it means to be our unique messy selves.

Authenticity is important to my worldview, for life and for my writing. I can point to a lot of reasons this has become central to my personality, but in the end, as Mr. Rogers says…

There’s only one you.

Authenticity means many things, but for me, it means being who you are, admitting your faults and failings, owning your ugly thoughts and animosities, and finding beauty even in the messy stuff. It means being unflinchingly honest, and honoring yourself before others. It’s embracing your entire weird self and doing – and becoming – the best you can with what you’ve got. Authenticity is how you find your true folks. Not everyone will like you, but no one needs 8 billion friends.

In my creative work, authenticity means pursuing projects that I’m passionate about. It means having fun, breaking rules, indulging my interests, being honest about the awkwardness and complexity of being human, embracing questions that have no answers, and putting my values on display.

Authenticity is a practice, not an end state. I can be stubborn and myopic and I don’t always get it right, in life or in my writing. I do my best not to sound like I’m lecturing from a hilltop. I’m climbing too and finding purpose in the journey.

Why is this important for writing?

Aren’t we just telling stories? Here’s my take: If we don’t see you on the page, what’s the point? Why spend your precious hours creating anything if the end result is something anyone could have done?

I want to see as much of you on the page as possible. If you can dig it up, I want to see it. Be yourself. Be extra. Use the flourishes and filigree of your life to write a story that couldn’t possibly have come from someone else.

Here’s a meme:

If you grew up in a Christian tradition, you are probably familiar with the parable of the Light and the Bushel. In essence, Jesus asks rhetorically if a lit oil lamp is meant to be kept under a basket or beside the bed at night. In the non-canonical Gnostic gospels, there’s another saying attributed to Christ that I return to often.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. – Gospel of Thomas, Verse 70

There are other translations and interpretations, but that’s the one I like. A bit heavy, yes, but still valid. None of us are at risk of destruction, but I do believe our lives are enriched – and maybe even saved – when we bring forth what’s within us, whatever that may be.

Now, you might ask: why is this important to me? Why have I chosen this hill to die on?

Well, sometimes we choose the hill we die on, and sometimes the hill falls on us. I wish someone had told my younger self that there’s no percentage in trying to fit in. The people who don’t want you won’t accept you and the people who would love you won’t be able to find you. I’m still learning that lesson, but it’s mostly sunk in.

Here’s a funny story.

It’s longish, but bear with me:

When I was in my early 20s, post-college and settled into semi-adult life, I knuckled down to write – I knew I wasn’t a stereotypical party gay, but I had aspirations of being a literary gay. Academic or bohemian, I didn’t care. I wrote regularly, found critique partners, and aimed for publication. I read the writing magazines, bought the annual Writer’s Market book, devoured advice, and subscribed to small press magazines, which is where young writers are supposed to start.

At that point, newly out, it was important to me that I write from my perspective as a young gay man. I didn’t have a name for it yet, but I insisted on authenticity. I wanted to write for myself, I wanted others like me to see themselves in story, and I would try to connect with people who were not like me. How do we ever get to understand each other, and acknowledge our mutual humanity, if not through stories? This was my line in the sand, and part of my earliest credo.

Now, the challenge was that gay wasn’t as cool then as it is now. In the Writer’s Market listings, publications would note whether they accepted gay/lesbian content, and most didn’t. Gay/lesbian work was treated like a genre, like science fiction or porn. If a market didn’t expressly ask for it, the safe assumption was that they wouldn’t publish it. As I recall, there were also boxes for “we don’t want to see…” and guess what they didn’t want to see?

But, I knew what was important to me and what I wanted to write, so I self-exiled from the bulk of the market and focused instead on breaking into one of the handful of reputable (mostly non-paying) markets for gay fiction and poetry.

I submitted to a few places, not successfully. However, eventually I got an incredibly encouraging personal note from an editor at a publication I really wanted to break into. Although he returned my story, he wanted me to know that he and several of the other submissions staff loved it, but were outvoted by those that did not. The story had a melancholy tone and ambiguous – shall I say messy? – ending, which apparently raised a heated debate. Half the editors loved it, half loathed it.

You might be surprised to hear that I took that as an amazing compliment. I wasn’t interested in easy writing. I wanted my readers to think about what they experienced. I wanted them to sit with the story a bit, and bring their own answers to the questions I raised. I wanted them to participate, to decide for themselves what the story meant. That’s the kind of writing I like and despite the rejection, I was thrilled to hear my story had its intended effect. It was the first clear signal that I was on the right track with my writing. The editor who wrote to me encouraged me to submit again.

And dutifully, around the time the next quarterly issue was due out, I made my pilgrimage to the only bookstore I knew carried the magazine and snapped up the new edition, genuinely eager to see what had been selected for publication. I actively sought to feel inspired.

And the first story in that issue was about a young gay guy suffering from classic urban ennui. He is no longer entranced by the city’s attractions, the bar life, or his sexual encounters. A spark is missing. He is searching for something. And in his quest, he answers a classified ad seeking sexual partners, meets an older man at his apartment, and poops on him.

That’s it. That’s the entire story.

My quiet, emotionally earnest tale with an ambiguous conclusion caused such controversy among the editors of one of the most reputable publications for gay men’s writing that it threatened to cause a rift in the collective, but somehow they managed to reach consensus on publishing that. My story was too weird, but that embodied their vision of contemporary gay fiction. That was the mirror they held up to an entire generation. Here you are, guys. This is who you are.

And at that moment, I realized I was simply not made for this world. I was too gay for the mainstream small press and not pooping-on-strangers enough for gay publications. This was disappointing, and honestly heartbreaking, but in the end, liberating. I completely gave up on submitting my work for other people to judge. I accepted that I would not become a literary gay, not if that’s what it took. I hoped never to become that jaded with life.

In retrospect, perhaps I didn’t need to go full scorched earth, especially given the lovely note the editor included with my rejection, but also – I know when to take a hint. I wasted my entire youth trying to be what other people wanted me to be, only to find that the harder I tried, the less they accepted me. I couldn’t bear another moment of it. I certainly wouldn’t alter my writing – the one thing that always worked for me – to suit someone else. Thirty years later, it’s a lot easier for a writer to find their niche, but back then, there were only so many lanes.

Of course, I kept writing. However, I stopped focusing solely on short stories, because I no longer chased publication. I wrote some poems and some plays. I wrote features and reviews for a handful of independent tabloid newspapers. Some friends and I put together our own zine for a couple of years and I published a few things through that, including my rejected story. I helped put together some small ad hoc theater groups, one of which produced one of my short plays. I took some art classes. I drew some comics (badly).

These days, I’m writing more than ever, and I think better than ever, but I still don’t see a place where I fit in. The hoops of traditional publishing are not for me, but the online self-publishing communities are so crammed with bossy cows and their musts and must-nots and have-tos and don’t-evers, I don’t feel right with them either. The vibe is off.

So I write for me. I publish my blog, which I enjoy way more than I ever thought I could. I work on my novels, which I’ll publish when I’m ready. I still like the feel of a physical book in my hands. But for me, the project is over once the book arrives. Anything that happens after will be a bonus.

My route to this point – my blog, my novels in progress – has been circuitous and not always easy. I could have chosen differently, and maybe things would have worked out better, but I know that I made the right choices for me at the time, which is all we can do.

Be yourself. Be authentic. Use all the glitter. Dial your magic up to 11.

I believe in us.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

Have you considered creating a writer’s credo? Whether or not you have, be warned – doing so may not be as easy as it sounds.

I started drafting one, but it will take time to get my thoughts down and organize them to my satisfaction. Like most people, I don’t go around with a list of commandments in my back pocket. If you ask me what I believe about a specific concept, I’m happy to discuss, but I’m not able to rattle off a campaign speech without notice.

So, writing a credo can take time. Because a credo is a personal statement, there’s no checklist that lets you know when you’ve finished. There are no guideposts to creating your guideposts. You’re mostly on your own.

However, in two recent posts on Writer Unboxed, literary agent Donald Maass addressed the writer’s credo in an indirect way. Maass doesn’t use the word “credo” but he does suggest that writers should clarify their view of the human experience and what they wish to accomplish with their work.

In his first article, Maass urges writers to take a “moral inventory” and suggests a series of questions to get you started. For the purpose of this inventory, the questions are either/or. You can choose only one answer, and cannot answer “both”, even if that is sometimes accurate. Here are six of the twelve questions:

• What factor most produces success, security, and happiness: Randomness and luck, or effort and reward?
• Which better describes you: warrior or survivor?
• What is the better goal: to do justice or to practice forgiveness?
• What is better to have: individual freedom or group cooperation?
• Which is better to have: faith or reason?
• Works of fiction should primarily show us: how we are or what we should do?

When you’re done, you should have a list of words or terms that reveal how you see yourself and the human condition. Maass says the final question is especially important to your writing, as it reveals your unconscious intention: Do you create mirrors or arrows? Do you want to show your readers the way people are or the way we should or could be?

Maass dives into the differences between mirrors and arrows – which he calls Stories of Fate and Stories of Destiny. He categorizes the answers to his twelve questions as either mirrors or arrows, and suggests that, from a craft perspective, it’s important to pick what kind of story you’re telling and which answers best fit that story. A strategy of picking some from Column A and some from Column B will likely result in a tale with a muddy message. Maass also offers some advice for putting this into practice, but for the purpose of a credo, the questions are the point. You can find the rest here, and may be inspired to add some of your own.

In a follow-up article, Maass continues discussing how to put these dichotomies into practice in your writing, particularly when deciding your story’s purpose and its intended effect. Generally, Maass argues that when your purpose is unclear, the effect on the reader is weak. You may write a story about the nature of evil or justice or equality, but if your reader does not understand your definitions of those concepts, your story may fall flat. The reader might not grasp your point or even believe that you were arguing for its opposite.

You should never assume that the reader will intuit your purpose. If you want your reader to know what is good or bad, what should be feared, or what should be hoped for, you need to feel that strongly in yourself and express it clearly on the page.

“What produces a strong effect for readers is not your story’s plot circumstances. It’s you. Your outrage, inspirations, problems and comforts. Your heartbreaks, hopes, humiliations and laughter. Your insights, lessons, and self-knowledge.” – Donald Maass

A credo can help you define your values in strong terms that carry through to the page. Maass offers suggestions – including more questions – to help you dig deep into your psyche to identify what angers or scares you or inspires defiance or hope. What makes you furious? When have you felt helpless? When have you felt terror? Those kinds of questions can point you toward specific values and the reasons those emotions were triggered. Again, Maass approaches the topic from a craft standpoint, but the exercises can help you create your writer’s credo.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

Authentic Writing: The Writer’s Credo

Authenticity is as simple as being yourself, but knowing yourself and feeling free to express your individuality can be more complicated.

Many people glide through life without conducting any serious examination of their motivations, belief systems, values, or choices. This isn’t necessarily a negative, though relying too heavily on instinct and habit can create a life of repetition and rut, if you’re not careful.

Writers have the advantage here, as we practice vicarious self-examination through our characters, whether we mean to or not. We make the effort to understand motivation, conflict, how the past haunts us, and how achieving our goals often requires a significant shift in our world view or way of thinking. I’m sure most of us have recognized ourselves in a character and thought “Yeeesh…”

But actively knowing ourselves takes more effort, particularly if we want to express our values, morals, observations, and perspectives through our creative work.

But what can help us get there? One way is the writer’s credo.

What is a credo?

A credo, simply, is a statement of the beliefs that guide your actions or, in this case, your creative work.

You may have seen credos in action in the business world. For example, a statement of beliefs may guide a business plan and attract like-minded investors and employees. Religious texts provide credos for their followers, who may also have their own personal credo for putting their faith into action.

In All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum presented his credo for living in language even children can understand: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess! Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

In Bull Durham, Kevin Costner’s Crash Ryan had a slightly more colorful statement of beliefs:

But what is a writer’s credo? It can be anything you want it to be, but generally it will contain the values you seek to promote and defend in your work. This can include your purpose in writing and your creative philosophy.

You may already have the foundation for a credo, even if you don’t realize it. Do you believe that love wins out over fear or that might makes right? Do you write to entertain or to illuminate? Do you believe stories raise questions or provide answers? Do you believe we must or must not write about certain topics? Even if you have never written down the answers, they reside in your subconscious, ready for you to access in your writing.

For this exercise, we’re going to talk about putting it together on paper.

Where to start

Write a few simple statements beginning with “I believe…”

You might be tempted to start your list with something profound. That’s great if you have something in mind, but if you don’t, that’s an easy place to get stuck. We can’t all be Maya Angelou. Start with the surface layers. If nothing comes right to mind, lean on a few clichés to get your gears turning.

I believe that honesty is the best policy.

I believe that hard work is the key to success.

I believe that what goes around comes around.  

Keep going. Get your base value statements out first. Then broaden your discovery.

What makes a good father or mother?

Should you stick by family no matter what, or is it ok to walk away?

What gives life meaning? Does anything?

Are humans responsible for themselves or are we responsible for each other?

You may dive a bit deeper and explain why you believe these things. Why is honesty important? Why should we honor family? What did you experience or learn that brought these values into your life? If you want to create an “official” credo, you might not include your stories, but write them down anyway. Go where your heart takes you.

What do you believe about religion, patriotism, death, love, morality, justice, crime, bodily autonomy, consent, freedom, responsibility, childhood? Consider not only statements of belief but the very nature of those concepts. In addition to your moral values, document your intellectual, spiritual, and artistic values. There’s no minimum and no limit – write down as few or as many statements as you wish.

Why do you write? What is your creative philosophy?

Do you write to entertain or create connection?

Do you write about the way life is or the way it should be?

Do you want to disturb or reassure?

Do your stories have a conclusive or ambiguous ending?

Is it more important for your readers to see themselves or be exposed to people and experiences different from them?

I frame these as either/or questions, but the answer can be both! (Most of the time. We’ll come back to that.)

As you deepen and refine your credo, focus on what you feel strongly. You may (correctly) believe that pineapple goes on pizza, but unless you’re willing to die on that hill, you can leave it out, as well as other moral values that aren’t as important. I don’t see the appeal of writing fan fiction but this doesn’t concern me enough to make it into my writer’s credo.

Your statements may reflect current events. What do you think about the role of the internet in an era when many children have a device in their hands before they can talk? How much and what kind of control should parents exert over what their children are taught in school? What motivates you, riles you? What topics bring up the deepest emotional reaction – anger, scorn, affection, reassurance. Look for those and explore them. If one of your “I believe…” statements sounds weak, revise it or cross it out.

Your credo will change over time. The belief system of a young writer who has recently left home may evolve as that writer ages and becomes a parent. A teenager may have strong beliefs about fairness, autonomy, freedom, sex, peer pressure, bullying, the nature of education, and the future. His older self may be more concerned with concepts of security, meaning, legacy, tradition, responsibility, safeguarding, family, and regret. If you ever revisit your credo, you might find that your perspective has evolved, and that certain strong beliefs don’t motivate you anymore. That’s ok. You are a work in progress. Your writing will naturally reflect the evolution of your values.

Why write a credo?

Some writers find that a credo gives them a greater feeling of purpose when they write and can contribute themes and concepts to their work. A credo can connect you more intimately to your creative work, ensuring that you focus your limited time on what matters most. Does your writing reflect your values or what you want to share? Are you crafting stories that create the effect you wish to see in your reader? A credo provides both a compass and a measuring stick, pointing you where you want to go and a way to compare your results to your intentions.

A credo can prompt creative inspirations. As you write your belief statement, characters, scenes, and stories may present themselves. The act of identifying your most important values can point towards new ideas and concepts you haven’t explored. Are you stuck in the middle of a story with no way out? Consider whether your story reflects your values and if it would benefit from a stronger examination. Find the compass and the guideposts in your credo and apply them to your writing.

You may feel more confident in your writing and more excited to work on your next project. You may find it easier to express yourself, guide your stories, or talk about your writing with others. You will have a clearer statement of your values, which you have examined and selected with purpose, and a chance to explore and test them in your writing. You may find that your writing has greater depth, purpose, and meaning. You might find yourself thinking more deeply and realize you have more to say than you believed.

Writing a credo can connect you to parts of your inner life that you’ve neglected or not yet discovered. You may uncover hidden beliefs, or even biases and resentments. You might hit some emotional roadblocks that need bulldozing. You might embrace new ideas or concepts. You might even identify strong beliefs that conflict, such as the conundrum of having tolerance for everyone’s beliefs, except those whose beliefs you find intolerant. Writing your credo provides you the opportunity to reconcile and align conflicting values into a whole.

A credo is worthwhile only to the extent that you want one, and the results are only as good as the effort you put into it. No one will ever see it. There’s no reward for writing one. I encourage you to write it out long-hand, if you can. I’ve found that embracing the physical act of writing creates a stronger connection to my thoughts and emotions.

What next?

I’m going to write one. I created a credo years ago when I started writing seriously. I may have it tucked away somewhere, but from what I recall, much of it is outdated. Naturally, it was filled with the concerns of a much younger man. I don’t think my values or beliefs have changed radically, but I’m sure they’ve evolved and my worries are different. I have more experience, more lessons learned, more to say.

I think my writing would benefit if I made a more conscious effort to express my values and world view. Certainly my values come out in my writing – I don’t believe we can help ourselves – but I can’t say that I’m creating with intention. In places where I’ve gotten stuck, the key question that comes to mind is what am I trying to say? A credo could help me figure out what I want to say and find places in my writing where I’ve gone astray or left it off the page entirely.

If you’ve written a credo or are considering it, drop a comment! Tell me one thing you believe.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

Are humans inherently good but sometimes led astray? Or are we inherently evil, with the occasional lapse into grace? The answer is a matter of personal faith, but we probably agree that we all have a mean streak. Therefore, any discussion of writing with authenticity requires that we acknowledge our worse angels.

All but the saints among us experience the delightful frisson of schadenfreude when a bratty kid bonks his head due to his own misbehavior or when the person who’s been tailgating you on the freeway gets caught by a speed trap. We are quietly delighted when an obnoxious co-worker calls out sick.

In worse cases, we might slip from observation into speculation. Would it be so terrible if that co-worker had something worse than the flu? And if that reckless driver spun out of control on a sharp turn ahead, wouldn’t that serve him right?

Do you get mad when someone crosses you, thwarts you, insults you? Your boss belittles your work or doesn’t give you adequate credit. A bully embarrasses you in public. Your neighbors let their dog use your yard. Someone cheats you out of money or betrays your trust. You might imagine a stronger comeuppance, something more vengeful than simple karma. Sometimes, we don’t want to wait for fate to step in.

And when those thoughts become action…?

There are many novels I could mine for today’s post—American Psycho, Lolita, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, The Picture of Dorian Gray—All stories about bad people running wild. Crime thrillers and murder mysteries provide ample examples of bad actors whose envy, anger, greed, or pride take them to bad ends.

On the other hand, mysteries aren’t told from the culprit’s POV. The reader is generally kept at a distance, ignorant of their thought processes and motivations until the end. And characters like Patrick Bateman and Humbert Humbert are so far removed from the bounds of decent human conduct, I doubt anyone reading this can see themselves in their shoes. We might be fascinated by them, those of us with a dark sense of humor might laugh at them, but we don’t really relate to them. We console ourselves with the thought that we are not like them.

But when we write, relating is the entire point. Nabokov may never have lusted after a child, but he lusted after someone. Creating a bad actor requires acknowledging our intrusive thoughts. Even if you don’t write about the uglier aspects of life, human nature contains multitudes, including anger, jealousy, vindictiveness. Nobody likes a Pollyanna.

And if you do plumb the depths of human behavior, your best path forward is finding the dark threads in your own nature and following them through the labyrinth to the monster dwelling at the center.

Patricia Highsmith is my go-to writer for characters residing in the dankest corners of the human experience. With her misanthropic reputation, Highsmith had an advantage over most of us, as her intrusive thoughts didn’t need much oomph to power to the surface, but we can still pick up a lot of lessons from her writing.

I love that her novels are written from the POV of the character we’d generally consider the villain. Some of her characters are sociopaths, taking advantage of people they consider inferior. Some are common con men or perverts whose bad conduct triggers a series of events that whips out of their control. Some are decent men who have a bad day, which leads them into temptation and danger.

While we’d agree that their results are evil, it’s difficult to paint Highsmith’s protagonists as the bad guys. We get a glimpse of their life before it goes astray. We watch a simple choice result in unintended consequences. We cringe when a protagonist continues down the wrong path instead of backtracking to safety. Best of all, we understand them, their hopes, their hurts, their unquenchable thirsts. Their choices make sense, and may even seem justified, even when their story ends badly. We may not see ourselves exactly, but we recognize their human emotions and needs.

In Deep Water, protagonist Vic Van Allen is no villain. He’s married with a child, lives in the suburbs, and runs a boutique publishing house with money from his family trust fund. A life many people would envy, except that his wife openly cheats on him. The neighbors know – Melinda drags her string of lovers to dinner parties and backyard barbecues – but maintain their relationship with her because they like Vic, who refuses to end either her conduct or the marriage. But by the time the novel opens, Melinda’s behavior is taking a toll.

He looked at her as she bent over her dressing table, gathering lipstick and keys, swaying in her cream-colored topcoat, and he suddenly felt that he didn’t care what happened to her tonight, because she was going out to denounce him again and it would serve her right to smash herself into a tree or to get stuck in a ditch on a fast turn. Then he thought of the hairpin turn on the hillside halfway between their house and the Mellers’. There was a cliff there, and the road would be slippery tonight.

At one of those dinner parties, the discussion turns to the recent murder of one of Melinda’s former lovers. Speaking to his wife’s current lover, Vic jokes that he was responsible. It’s a spur of the moment comment, intended to scare the man away from his wife, startle and upset Melinda, and retake some of his authority. In that instant, the pride Vic’s been swallowing gets the better of him and he lashes out.

And can you blame him? Melinda inflicts repeated public humiliation on Vic. She knows he’s still in love with her, but rejects him privately. It’s natural that he’d confront his wife’s next boyfriend. We might not blame Vic if he swung a punch. However, this time, his retribution is light; he responds with words, a joke. But that joke stirred up a private wish – that he’d been strong or ruthless enough to rid himself of his wife’s previous lover. The thought is intriguing.

As the days pass, Vic convinces himself that he would have been justified in killing Melinda’s last boyfriend, and his friends agree. No one believes Vic did it, or even could do it, but they couldn’t argue the man wouldn’t have had it coming. The more Vic toys with the fantasy, the more enticing it becomes. And when Melinda takes her next lover, Vic makes the natural choice, perhaps the only logical choice. What began as a joke, a comment made in response to public embarrassment and a threat to his family, takes on a life of its own.

He remembered a knot, a dark, hard knot of repressions and resentments in himself, and it was as if his murdering De Lisle had untied the knot. He was more relaxed now and, to be perfectly honest, happier…A discharge of repressed hatred, perhaps that was a better metaphor than the untying of a knot. But just what had pushed him across the line from fantasy to fact that night in the Cowans’ swimming pool? And would it happen again under the right circumstances? He hoped not.

Highsmith torments Vic through some one-third of the novel before his thoughts start to take their dark turn. The reader watches Melinda humiliate him in front of the neighbors. We hear Vic’s friends plead with him to put an end to her behavior, one way or the other. We follow Vic’s intrusive thoughts – which initially are only thoughts – until they guide him to his fateful choices.

And it all started because a husband wanted to bully the man sleeping with his wife. I can’t imagine circumstances in which I’d kill someone who had sex with my SO, but I know what humiliation and rejection feel like. I’ve wished ill on people. I can imagine being pushed up to the line. Would I cross it? Unlikely, but when a man is up against the line, crossing it only takes one step.

What makes you mad? When do you feel threatened, jealous, or vengeful? Pinpoint a moment of high emotion, not a mere inconvenience. Take that emotion through a dangerous path, as it becomes a thought, then a wish, then an idea, a plan, a choice, an action.

Can you imagine yourself in a scenario where violence is the wrong answer and yet remains attractive? Could you commit a murder that wasn’t in defense of your life or family? Could you kill for convenience or spite or to keep a secret? Because someone offended you or has something you want? Are you willing to spill that blood on the page?

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

There’s something to be said for a hero who is flawed but still superior, like the job candidate who confesses his major weakness is caring too much, but most contemporary novels are lead by characters with personality tics you won’t find on a resume.

When writing gurus talk about complicated characters, they start with tragedy in the back story, a blind spot or mental block, a weakness that the hero has to overcome before they can achieve the tangible story goal. In addition to relationships woes and external obstacles, they want the protagonist to suffer from some good ol’ stinkin’ thinkin’.

And that is what most readers want – characters who are good but not too good. They may have unrealized dreams or be in the midst of a setback. They might be financially strapped, put-upon, or unpopular or unloved. Any hero who begins a novel with an orderly life is guaranteed to hit a rough patch, usually of their own making. We like characters who make bad decisions or cave in to family or take the safe route, because they remind us of ourselves. And we like watching them succeed, because that means maybe we can too.

But some of us aren’t satisfied with 101-level complicated characters. We want the master class.

We want the Hot Mess.

A hot mess is more than a degree of difference from flawed characters. Flaws can be fixed. Backstory trauma can be healed or resolved. Weaknesses can be shored up or even turned into strengths. In contrast, the hot mess simply is.

The hot mess has a journey but no destination. Rather than dreams, the hot mess has questions that have no answers. What is life’s purpose? Why are people cruel to those they love? Where is my true home? Who am I? Is there more to life than this?

I like these characters because they feel more true to life. In the real world, there are no easy answers. We don’t get mentors and sidekicks, and we can’t wrap up a story problem in 300 pages. Life doesn’t present us with pitch perfect challenges that will help us overcome an emotional weakness so that we can make all our dreams come true. That’s fiction.

Earlier, I wrote about being ugly on the page, but messy does not mean emotional cruelty or selfishness, or portraying yourself in the worst light. It can mean those things, but a person or character can be kind-hearted, generous, and well-liked, and still be a complete disaster.

Rather, messy is an acknowledgment that humans are complicated, contradictory, and often unknowable. No matter how adamantly we believe we know our purpose and desires, life and our own badly attuned emotions can confuse us, undercut us, and lead us astray. At times, we may not know what to feel or which emotion should take precedence. On paper, our lives may look orderly and on-track, but inside, we feel tired, disoriented, or lost. We look for answers that can’t be found.

Anne Tyler is a master of messy characters. Her protagonists long to find meaning in life, but are trapped by inaction. They want love, but avoid connection. They prefer solitude but are drawn to strange company. Their stories eventually resolve, but the reader is often left feeling something is amiss. A protagonist shies away from happiness, or chooses to find love with someone they don’t particularly like. A character abandons his own path to embrace family tradition. The hero turns left when everything up to the final moment suggested that her path led right. I could have rolled through almost any of her books for this post, but I chose the following pair of semi-pseudo-autobiographical novels for a closer look.

In his 1963 novel City of Night, John Rechy fictionalizes the years he spent as a male prostitute in various U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans. An unflinching look at men residing in a sexual underground, City of Night follows an unnamed hustler through his encounters with various johns, including a sickly bed-ridden old man, a masochist, drag queens, handsome studs, other hustlers, and the occasional guy next door type.

Some of his relationships are recurring, most are fleeting, none provide for any serious emotional attachment. And yet throughout the novel, there is an undercurrent of longing, for self-knowledge, for connection, even as its characters arrange for anonymous encounters with men who can’t provide their real names, much less a morning after. An evening concludes, the bars close, but there are no real endings.

In the same way that the characters’ lives in 1950s America would be bifurcated – public/private, socially acceptable/transgressive, daylight/twilight – so too are their emotions and desires in conflict. They seek out beauty only to degrade it, they live in community but savage it, they act indifferent but crave approval. They want love, but can’t give it. They buy sex but want the happy ending. Towards the end, even the protagonist starts to yearn for emotional connection, or a bit of permanence, if not love and a home, and acknowledges the contradiction between how he’s lived and what he’s drifting towards.

Much of this is portrayed in subtext, so your mileage may vary. What I intuit from a character’s mannerisms, questions, or unspoken words may differ from your interpretation. We see what we see. But in the end, the men in City of Night are wandering, a bit lost, complex, and yes, messy.

This next book, by a lesbian writer, couldn’t be more different from City of Night, but it’s characters and their emotions are both terrible and complicated.

In Bastard Out of Carolina, the much-missed Dorothy Allison fictionalized her childhood, including sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, as well as her own early sexual experimentation and same-sex orientation. While any of those individual topics would be a lot for most writers to handle on the page, Allison’s juxtaposition of abuse and awakening, childhood and adult-sized trauma, create a tortuous emotional experience. Messy doesn’t start to cover it.

Main character Bone wants to love and please her stepfather, and can’t understand why she doesn’t, even before his abuse starts. As his violence escalates, Bone’s desire to love transforms into loathing, and yet she still looks inside for what has triggered her stepfather’s anger and made her its target. Bone loves her mother, yet is angered and confused that she does nothing to protect her child from the horror she’s married. She worships the men in her family who could and would rescue her, but maintains her silence to protect her mother. She’s confused and terrified by her stepfather’s molestation, but when she’s a little older, gleefully engages in self-exploration. She engages in bad behavior that she knows could trigger punishment at home, because she wants to impress her cousins.

You might feel a bit of whiplash as the tone shifts from scene to scene, but the overall effect rings true. Life – especially life under the constant threat of poverty, abandonment, and domestic violence – is jagged. It’s messy and Allison dredged from the deep end to bring Bone’s story – her story – to the page.

I don’t know if current editions of the book contain a trigger warning, but here you go: Allison does not hold back, either from describing the abuse or from depicting Bone’s confusing, contradictory, and oft-times impenetrable emotions and thoughts. A child, Bone doesn’t yet know herself, much less understand adult choices and relationships, nor can she navigate the labyrinth of domestic violence nearly breaks her.

And yet, Allison doesn’t wallow in her depiction of the abuse or Bone’s despair. Bastard Out of Carolina isn’t poverty porn and it doesn’t linger within scenes of Bone’s abuse a word longer than necessary. She’s no messier than she needs to be, a master class in rawness with restraint.

I like City of Night and Bastard Out of Carolina because they leave more questions than they answer. Rechy’s hustler doesn’t find love or even decide he wants it. He’ll have to stop prostituting himself some day, but not today. Where is he going? We don’t know and neither does he. No one can tell Bone why her mother repeatedly chooses her stepfather over her own daughter, even after she given full witness to the abuse. Bone doesn’t get resolution or healing. We aren’t privy to her mother’s thinking or her stepfather’s backstory. We don’t learn why people are cruel to those they love, because there is no answer to that question.

Both books are worth reading, though each is tough in its own way, as they explore complicated sexual dynamics. City of Night revels in grody underground anonymous gay sex encounters, while Bastard explores the tangled feelings of a girl whose natural adolescent sexual awakening occurs amid horrible physical and sexual abuse. But if you want to explore messy, complicated characters on the page, these are fascinating examples. And if you want something a bit gentler on the palate, try something by Anne Tyler. You can’t go wrong there.

Do you have questions without answers? Don’t be afraid of putting them on the page. You may find that your readers are as messy as you are.

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!

Today’s topic may not appeal to you, and that’s ok. Many amazing writers strive to entertain, not convince. They want to help readers escape reality, not rub their noses in it. Not that you need it, but I approve.

This applies to me too, because frankly, while I love a story that stirs the pot or predicts the future, I don’t have it in me to write one. It requires a specific kind of insight, as well as an ability to balance passion and dispassion, plus a lot of emotional energy. If I get worked up about something to the point it threatens to come out in my fiction, I can’t be even-handed, and that makes for terrible stories. I admire this skill in others, though.

On the other hand, sometimes you can’t help it. Being authentic sometimes means you wear your heart on your sleeve. Writers observe the world and are passionate in our beliefs. We know what we know and feel what we feel, fully and deeply. With that in mind, it’s natural that we will identify social problems and want to write about them.

But what problems? That’s up to you. The environment, pornography, reproductive rights, the right to life, the breakdown of civility, the loss of traditional values, equal justice under the law, patriotism, privacy, foreign entanglements, economic disparity, racism, sexism, antisemitism, men’s rights, women’s rights, school choice, the Second Amendment, the First Amendment.

Even if you don’t expressly set out to write a political novel, your beliefs will find their way into your writing. If you have a strong preference between the traditional family and chosen family, we’ll see it. If you’re passionate about free speech, we’ll hear it. No matter what I write, the story question will never center on the benefits of conforming to group-think, or how the world would be better if we allowed a small group of elites to make all our personal decisions.

Consider Stephen King. He isn’t a political writer, but can you think of a novel where the government was the good guy? King hasn’t written a horror story called “I’m From the Government and I’m Here to Help” – hat tip to Ronald Reagan – but he might as well have. Based on his public comments, I don’t think he hates the government, but deep down, he’d have to admit he doesn’t really trust it, either.

And what does King think of manhood and family? I can easily recall many side villains in his novels who were bullies, drunks, or wifebeaters, and the characters who came from broken, abusive, or dysfunctional homes, and how that early life trauma pulled them under or forced them to overcome. You would never argue that King writes family dramas, but his opinions about what makes a good man or a good family are right there on the page. You might not consider that a political opinion, but the personal is political. Our values form our view of the world and politics is one way we put those values into action.

And maybe that’s a better way to frame this realm of authenticity.

Politics have a bad reputation. We generally attach a negative connotation – lying, grifting, fecklessness, divisiveness, rage baiting, fearmongering – and we may hesitate to soil our creative work with it. Fortunately, the word values still calls us to our higher selves (at least for now).

Patriotism

Family

Courage

Justice

Charity

Freedom

Faith

Community

Law

Order

Sacrifice

Individuality

Equality

Responsibility

Honesty

Peace

Some of those may resonate more strongly inside you, others may feel more vague. Values are individual. Even when we use the same word to describe a core principle, its meaning will differ from person to person. My concept of freedom and yours are not the same.

You don’t have to write a political novel – I doubt I ever will – but do look for your values on the page. What’s important to you? What do those words mean? What’s at stake if that value falters? What happens when you act against your values or don’t defend them? What action would you take and what would you sacrifice in honor of them?

Tell us about it.

Do I need to share a list of political novels? It feels strange not to, but also superfluous. You can guess what I’m going to write here: 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, Les Misérables, The Jungle, The Grapes of Wrath, The Crucible, To Kill a Mockingbird, Alas, Babylon.

But also: Woman on the Edge of Time, Never Let Me Go, A Clockwork Orange, The Trial, Things Fall Apart, The Parable of the Sower, Slaughterhouse 5, Elmer Gantry, On the Beach

Know anyone who’d like my blog? Please forward today’s post! I’d love to hear from them.

Need more content? Join my mailing list!