Fragments

"and there are forces of conflict
Taking portions of my mind
In whose realm laced with trickery
The fragments I must find."   Oysters, Tori Amos

I am not a very courageous writer.  Pat Conroy, for example, is a very courageous writer.  Besides being incredible works of art, his books of fiction and non-fiction expose the underbelly of his family and significant institutions.  He has paid a heavy personal price for his rise to becoming a New York Times bestseller of books several times over. He has members of his immediate family who do not want to have anything to do with him.  There are people at the Citadel who never want to see him. You can only surmise that the words he writes and the stories he reveals are true.  But that doesn't mean that those people wanted to be found out. It doesn't mean that they wanted the stories of even those who are deceased scratched up in very public places for all the world to see.  But he continues to write. And I can only assume that he continues to alienate.

There are stories that I know by heart that I want so badly to write about.  Well, I do write about them. Just nobody sees those words but me.

Will I ever get to the place that I am willing to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may?  I doubt it.  As much as I enjoy writing and receiving feedback that my words have struck a chord, I'm not all that thrilled when my words strike a nerve. As I type, there is a force field around those characters. My words send out vibrations that test the waters.  They ping the depths of possible outcomes and consequences. If they come back with an all-clear then I continue to write.  If they warn me of possible offenses, then I stop writing.

In her incredible book "The Forest For the Trees",  Betsy Learner, a writer and editor, says that if you ever want to be a writer who is taken seriously, you have to be willing to write with little or no regard for the consequences of your words. You simply write for the joy of writing. She says that you tell the story simply  because the story must be told.

I'm no Pat Conroy and I never will be.  His skills approach sorcery as he divines the depths of his experiences, his plot and character development. But I have stories that Conroy will never know.  They are my stories.  As good as he is and as fabulous his stories, he can never write my stories. Only I can do that.  My problem though is that most of the people in my stories are still very much alive. They are flesh and blood.  They have significant others. And attorneys. So does this make me a coward? Does this mean according to Lerner that I will never be taken seriously?  Or does it mean that I'm smart?

So what you read of me is the tip of the iceberg. It wasn't the tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.  The iceberg will have to wait. With much  respect to Pat Conroy and Betsy Lerner, two writers I deeply admire,  I will probably never  write with little or no regard for those involved. I write what I'm willing to write; I'll leave it to you to read between the lines.