Call Me Charlie

Issue 263

You guys,

You were heartbroken when you got dumped? Thrilled when you got the job? Sad when your grandma died? We know.

Vulnerability is not about writing your feelings on the page or describing how something felt in your body. Your feelings are mostly obvious and therefore cliche and boring.

Many people seemed to love the memoir Troubled by Rob Henderson but I couldn’t get past the cliches:

I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

This blew my nine-year-old mind.

Realizing that my sister and I would not be taken from each other filled me with unexpected joy.

In Viola Davis’ memoir, Finding Me, she got a leading role in the movie Doubt and wrote, “I was so excited. I was jumping up and down.”

Tell us something specific and visual from the scene that makes this moment different from the expected response, or don’t tell us at all. Move on to the next piece of the story. I have cliche responses all the time. When I’m excited I totally jump up and down. But I will not write it. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean it’s interesting.

Nat Eliason’s audience probably isn’t concerned with cliches but I couldn’t make it past his prologue:

This couldn’t be real

I could hardly form the words

My mouth wasn’t working

My heart hammered in my ears and pins and needles burned my hands and feet

I squeezed my fists as hard as I could

The hammering in my ears continued

My hands burned

I never could have dreamed of…

My entire life had changed

I should stop pointing fingers because I’ve written my fair share of cliches:

I felt triggered.

I felt my whole body emanate heat.

Rage coursed through my veins.

I had a completely life-changing transformation.

I felt so angry, so indignant, and so strongly that I needed to make them understand my perspective and why it was important.

You can stop living your life full of fear, anxiety, and anger, and live one with acceptance, freedom, and openness.

I think a lot of writers understand the importance of specificity and imagery, but rather than look around themselves in the scene, or move past the cliche moment, they double down on the feelings and reactions in their body and try to describe them in a more interesting way. But these more descriptive phrases are often just more cliches, as in, “beads of sweat dripped down the back of my neck.”

I was writing a chapter in my book and there was a very big moment that I remembered so vividly, when I looked in the mirror after I snorted cocaine. It was such a big moment that it was how I ended the chapter. I wrote:

“I stared at my reflection. My eyes were big and glassy. I felt my teeth grinding. What are you doing?? This is not your life.”

Hasn’t everyone, at some point or another, experienced a mirror moment, where they look in the mirror and know they need to change, or at the very least, give themselves a pep talk? As for my eyes being big and glassy and grinding my teeth, that is a common reaction to doing cocaine.

But this scene did happen, and it was a pivotal moment, and it was so clear in my memory that how could I not include it?

Well if something is boring and obvious, you just take it out. In the rewrite I moved the bathroom scene up in the chapter and ended it sooner, deleting the mirror moment:

“I locked the door behind me and removed my apron and peed as fast as I could so I could have time to do my drugs in peace.”

One last thought on vulnerability: self-deprecation is not likeable.

There’s desperation in self-deprecation. It’s begging the reader to understand that we know that they know that we suck, and we’re going to write it before they have a chance to think it.

I recently wrote a newsletter post about my 30th birthday party. In the first draft I wrote:

“I wore a white dress. At around 8:00 P.M. I had the nerve to make an outfit change and came back outside in a black floral dress.”

Writing that I had the nerve to make an outfit change is my present self looking disdainfully upon my past self. It’s letting the reader know, Wasn’t she the worst? But she was me! I should not separate myself from her. I should write the story as it happened, and as it happened, I thought having an outfit change at my 30th birthday party was the coolest.

I rewrote it:

“I wore a white dress. At around 8:00 P.M. I did an outfit change and came back outside in a black floral dress. There are pictures.”

Even as I’m judging self-deprecation in other people’s writing I’m still doing it in my own. If I were to rewrite this, again, I’d be more honest about how cool I thought the dress change was.

I’m sure I’ll continue to cringe at my own writing but I’ll try to follow these three guiding principles: don’t write your feelings, don’t write cliches, and don’t use self-deprecation. Often, vulnerability is just telling the darkest truth, the truth you’re the least inclined to share.

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Until next week,

Charlie

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My calendar is open for 1-on-1 Zoom calls to discuss whatever you’d like…writing, parenting, publishing, hard conversations? Let’s talk about it! If my slim window of availability doesn’t work for your schedule, just reply and we can work something out.