Caveat Scriptor: Let the Writer Beware

by E. Lynn Heinisch

I felt my skin clawed off by the writing instructor and five strangers, all of them “helping.”

Under the bright interrogation lights of the workshop table, I watched her mouth say braggy, superficial and elitist. I reeled from each verbal punch, getting foggier as she continued. Did she just say spoiled? Trust fund? No, no, no. This can’t be right. That wasn’t what I wrote. Like a boxer down for the count, I struggled to hang on, absorbing each blow and trying not to tear up. “Does anyone else have a problem with the word diva?” Heads nodded all around. “Why should we care about these women?”

My piece was about life as a single woman working overseas. I tried to show that, while it sounds glamorous to have an interesting job traveling to far-flung places, there is difficulty and loneliness in being cut off from traditional support networks. My friends and I paid a high price for the benefits of such a life. I hoped my essay was quirky and funny, and that it conveyed how we created a global support group. I hoped readers would relate to these women and recognize the universality of friendship, even in unusual circumstances. They didn’t.

I had spent 15 years writing for a living, first as a journalist and then as a press officer for an international aid agency. I knew the formula for a feature about someone else. But I was starting to believe that my own stories were also worth telling. As a first step, recently transferred to New York, I signed up for the four-hour personal essay workshop, taught by an editor at a top women’s magazine.

I jotted down the comments like an eager pupil. But, blindsided at braggy, I never recovered. I was too shell-shocked to hear anything good. The instructor said she needed to hear more about the hardships. Tell us more about the anxiety. What led to the near-nervous breakdown? It seemed for readers to care I had to provide schadenfreude. Was it necessary to spell out the most intimate details about my friends’ lives and mine? The instructor gave me a bright smile and said, “OK. Anything else?” 

Schlepping to the subway in the biting cold, I struggled to recall exactly what happened. She may also have said “travel piece” and unique subject, and something about my voice. I crawled into bed with four books on writing and flipped to marked passages. Julia Cameron cautioned, “Be careful not to share emotionally charged stories with critical readers, blocked writers, or those for whom the material is an inflammable emotional issue. The point of sharing is to garner support, not controversy. Use your own good judgment as to when, where, and how you share.” 

Fourteen years and many workshops since, I can see now that both Cameron and the instructor were right. 

Writing the personal takes time and it takes trust. I later took an eight-week course in creative nonfiction with a New York University writing professor. Four of us met in her tiny living room on the Upper West Side. She coached us on how to give one another feedback. I wrote about my father dying two weeks before I turned seven, revising the piece over and over as the instructor and students pushed me to go deeper, make things clearer, get at the core. Like trainers helping me rise to the challenge, they made the piece stronger. Ladies Home Journal bought it.

I’m now in a year-long memoir class in Seattle, meeting weekly with an award-winning teacher and author. Fifteen of us are writing deeply and learning as we help each other improve. Early on, our teacher explained why the reader needs to know the painful parts and it made sense. It’s not schadenfreude. It’s human nature. Making ourselves vulnerable is how we connect with one another in life and how readers connect with characters. 

I pulled out the old diva piece. One student had written, “I can relate.” A screenwriter in the group had said “nice open” and “nice close.” The teacher wrote “nice idea.” 

Maybe it’s time to revise.

E. Lynn Heinisch’s writing has appeared in Ladies Home Journal, the Seattle Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kindred, Duke Magazine, the Journal of Modern African Studies, and the books So Far Away and Yet So Near and Slowing Down in a Speeded Up World. She was writer-in-residence at North Cascades National Park in Washington.