Honesty in Writing #6

“Try to imagine that everyone you know is dead when you’re writing this.” This process certainly seemed to work for Jennette McCurdy. Throughout her book, she is very open and honest with the audience. That couldn’t have been easy for her, but the advice seems to have helped. In her memoir, McCurdy discusses at length the perils of being a child actor, her struggles with alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, and her sexual experiences, often very graphically. This works for the novel as it helps the audience get a deeper insight into the life and experiences of Jennette and even helps us sympathize with her even more. 

If I were to write a memoir, I don't think I would be as open and honest with my audience as Jennette is. Even though I know that the advice is supposed to make me write more truthfully and be more transparent with my experiences, I know that’s a load of BS. I wouldn’t be able to ignore the fact that strangers would be reading the things that I would be writing about. I know that’s the whole point of a memoir which is probably why I’m not inclined to write one. Jennette McCurdy (probably through tons of therapy) is able to be so open and honest with the audience probably because she has come to terms with the ugly parts of her past and realizes that she isn’t that person anymore. I on the other hand don’t really want people to know all of my personal business. I will concede however that by sharing her experiences with others in such a vulnerable and transparent way, Jennette McCurdy has probably helped lots of other people to identify problems in their own lives. Whether it be trauma from the past or things happening to them right now, I would wager that there have been more than a few who have read this book and come out the other end ready to make a change. That’s good for them and it’s good for her, but I don’t plan on writing an autobiography ever, or at least not until I have something of value to say. 

Writing openly and honestly has always been something I’ve struggled with and I’ll bet other writers in this class can say the same. I haven’t always been honest in my writings or even in these blogs about my life. Whether it’s in order to make a story more cinematic or to frame something that really challenged me internally as no big deal, I’ve always taken some creative liberties in my writing. Seeming vulnerable is something that young men are sort of conditioned to not do. Showing everybody the open and honest truth is something I rarely do mainly in part to hide those vulnerabilities from others for fear of getting judged or ridiculed. That mechanism of writing probably isn’t the best for constructing the most fulfilling, interesting, or enriching stories and my writing definitely suffers in part due to my lack of honesty. Something Jennette McCurdy probably figured out is that people probably don’t care all that much about your personal life. They have things going on of their own to worry about and it's beneficial to be honest and make a better story than lie and create something you aren’t proud of.