26 Comments
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Ali Griffin Vingiano's avatar

So happy I found your newsletter. Thank you for sharing this!

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Thank you, Ali. I'm happy you found your way here! :)

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Brian's avatar

I like Emerson’s take:

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures”

So interesting, Meta, that you tap into these dark corners we often repudiate.

In a novel I’m writing, I had to write a bit of a twisted, racy scene that was critical to the plot. I was conflicted on a couple of levels foremost that my mother might read the scene… I wrestled with that one for awhile;

the other concern was what would this element of the story reveal about me?

Would people perceive me as a a pervert? (However accurate that might be— ha ha) in the end I wrote it, I owned it and I think it was good for the story.

Perhaps fiction is too revelatory of truth. Maybe we can imbue fiction with truth by highlighting it with our own truths.

It’s worth thinking about in any case. Thanks for exploring another great corner of writing.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Brian, I think you've hit on something a lot of writers can relate to. They might not be so worried about what the world at large would think of them, but they're definitely worried about what their family members would think...and that's true at any age!

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CJ Real's avatar

The reminder of being in control is something that resonated with me, as did slowly being more vulnerable and personable in my writing. Overall, great piece!!

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Thanks, CJ! Glad to "meet" you!

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Henriette Lazaridis's avatar

I think I made up the ego part.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

😂😂😂

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Henriette Lazaridis's avatar

I like what you said here about being vulnerable without spilling your guts (more than you would like to!). Keats had his concept of negative capability, to define the person who is comfortable with uncertainty and comfortable with a suppression of ego (I'm vastly paraphrasing). I think it's important to write in this mode, even when not writing content that, in itself, reveals private things about your life.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

I'll need to look up the Keats concept--sounds fascinating. I'll match your Keats and raise you one TS Eliot 😂, who talked about the need to efface one's personality when writing. I take that to similarly mean supressing one's ego. I love thinking about the the role of ego in creativity, so thank you for raising this!

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Henriette Lazaridis's avatar

Ooh, I see your Eliot and . . . I’m out of poker references :-) but here’s the Keats, from a letter: “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Beautiful!

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Gina Vild's avatar

It’s like living therapy out loud!😊

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Meta Wagner's avatar

LOL!

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Jade Eby's avatar

I'm going to be linking to this article in my workshop, Writing Fiction to Heal, because this exactly what I teach my students to do. Using our vulnerability and real-life events to shape and mold a fiction novel has so many healing benefits, it's insane. In all my work, I've actually found that my writers and students get more healing, catharsis, and longer lasting residue improvement in their lives when they choose to fictionalize things instead of going to memoir or essay writing (which I also highly encourage -- it is also very cathartic).

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Meta Wagner's avatar

So interesting, Jade, and thanks for sharing my article in your workshop. I just signed up for your newsletter (from the title alone, I can tell it's going to be wonderful). For anyone else, who's interested, here's the link: https://therebelmfaway.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=account-card&utm_content=subscribes&autoSubmit=true&email=meta%40metawagner.com

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Jade Eby's avatar

Oh my gosh -- thank you!

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Erin Kane's avatar

I'm not yet comfortable writing memoir - I'm working on fictional pieces. I have a writing teacher who pushes me to give my fictional characters all of my problems. And even my friends' problems. Those trust issues, emotional traumas, eating disorders, and other wounds reveal my characters' wants and needs which then drive the story into something uniquely theirs rather than mine. So I get some catharsis without revealing my personal story in detail.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

There's something freeing about doing it through fiction, isn't there! While I teach personal essay/memoir, I've sometimes suggested to students that they could consider turning their memoir into a novel instead. This advice is especially for the ones who are afraid of hurting someone in their lives or revealing something they haven't told family members about yet.

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Jade Eby's avatar

Yes, yes, yes! As I mentioned in my comment -- this is exactly what I teach my students. I love that you are already doing this and grasping how powerful it is to do!

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Gina Vild's avatar

At least with fiction there is wiggle room. I'm writing non-fiction and the expectation is that storytelling compiles you to tell your personal story. Gulp! It's not an easy path but hopefully if you choose to be a writer you have a perspective to enhance the details of your story that will enrich others.

No matter what your format, writing is your brains on paper, and that is intimidating for everyone.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

So much pressure to share personal stories now, even with a research-based book. It's what readers seem to want and relate to, but it may not always be what the writer would have chosen to do!

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afarin@transtrategy.com's avatar

We all see life through the filter of our perception. A writer absorbs the life around him/her, make it personal and recreate. How could we avoid putting our vulnerability on the page and stay authentic? At the end of the day, letting it all go (with plausible deniability of fiction) is what the writing about.

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Great phrasing about the "plausible deniability" that fiction provides. And wonderful point about authenticity. Hard (if not impossible) to achieve it without vulnerability. Thanks, Afarin!

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Cali Bird's avatar

I remember a talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave where she said, if you want to know what's really going on in someone's life, read their fiction. I think as writers that we have to be comfortable with quite a high level of sharing our lives. But as you say, we can decide where to draw the line. One of my writer friends says that putting your writing 'out there' is like walking down the street naked. Everyone can see what you've got and who you are!

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Meta Wagner's avatar

Yes! It's one thing in a writing workshop (which in some ways can be even more difficult because it's intimate), but it's another to publish one's work and have strangers "know" you. Takes courage!

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