Less Shame, More Shamelessness: by James Black

My mother is a writer who refuses to admit she’s a writer. According to her, she doesn’t write anything real–a novel or stories or poems or blog posts. She doesn’t have much skill, she says; she just writes.

Fine, I’ll play along with her, except: she writes to people I know, friends of mine who have become her friends, and some of them have told me my mother has sent them “the loveliest email” or “a touching note.” Although Mom’s intention may be to dash off a mundane, how-do-you-do kind of thing, what she achieves seems to transcend a nice gesture due to her writerly choices.

I know this is true, because she’s written me emails. Let me be clear: sometimes, she can go on and on, which bothers me because she usually tells me what others are doing when I’d prefer to know what she’s doing. However, her epic catalogs of daily goings-on usually set up a brief discussion of feelings and, sometimes, a doozy of an observation. Just when I think she’s not tending to audience, I realize I’m in her sights.

But this kind of writing just happens, she refutes. She’s not trying to write anything special; she’s just writing. I don’t believe her. I think she has a sense of what she’s trying to do but feels reluctant to test her ability to maintain or improve her skills. I have no doubt she could, but maybe she doesn’t and wants to keep the stakes manageable. Regardless, there would be no shame in admitting it.

Although she can reflect up a storm when she may or may not mean to, she freezes up when attempting to write something for a wide, unknown audience.

For a non-writer, she’s like pretty much every writer I know. And every writer in existence.

Through writing, we reveal ourselves. My mother does. I do. Any of us does. For some reason, there’s a tendency for writers to have the most judgmental readers in mind as they write, demons from our pasts and assholes we’ve never met, whether specific individuals or composites. The editorial voices in one’s head are internalized personifications of shame.

In her TED talk “Listening to Shame,” Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, discusses how difficult it can be to face shame because shame is about who you perceive yourself to be. It fuses to your identity. Brown explains that shame has two messages: you shouldn’t bother, and if you dare to bother, you were arrogant to try.

The most effective way a writer can avoid shame is by simply not writing. The next most effective way is to write but do so tentatively, leaving out as much of oneself as possible. But then you’re not writing what you want to write, and writing feels kind of pointless–not entirely, but enough that you’re not invested and likely to write stuff that isn’t your best.

One way we self-proclaimed writers screw ourselves over is by focusing on “write” as an intransitive verb. The act of writing becomes more important than the objects we write. It’s crucial for me to remember that, as a writer, I’m always writing something specific, and I’m writing it to or for someone.

Avoiding shame entirely may very well be impossible. I say we don’t write for its benefit, which is our detriment. I do my best to block my vicious internal editor, preferring to write for people who are rooting for me. I don’t care if that’s cheesy or makes me seems like a wimp. When I imagine my audience, it’s not staffed by a mindless fan club. My trusted readers have good taste and are ready to point out flaws. I’ve internalized the best and the fairest. They want me to keep writing pieces that are real and true, and also a little grand.

I want it more than they do. I’ve gradually come to realize there’s no shame in admitting it.