Breeding and Writing: Grandpa knows what you’re doing in there

 

–by Tracy Lucas

 

The media likes to throw around the idea that we are living in a “new generation” as if that weren’t true of every generation that’s ever come down the pike.

So, disclaimers first: I hate that phrase. It’s pretentious and pious, and a little too self-congratulatory for me. Yeah, yeah, we’re great. We didn’t build the pyramids or the Great Wall of China, we didn’t invent written language or steam power, but whatever. We’re awesomeness in a bag.

But as much as I detest the groupthink, demographic marketing labels (which is all they are), I’ve got to admit we’re dealing with some brand new stuff this time around.

I’m an Internet junkie. So are you if you’re reading this. There don’t seem to be too many folks left who need an explanation of how email works, or why it’s somehow okay that your paycheck lands as intangible numbers connected directly to a little piece of plastic now instead of as cash in your hands. We get it.

As a writer, though, it’s throwing off my game. I’ve had great opportunities through the Internet and platforms thereof which I would never have had a chance at gaining access to in a paper world, especially since culturally, I live about as far from New York and L.A. as you can get.

But as much as it’s enhanced my ride, the instant access to anything and everything has screwed me over.

My father is in his late seventies. My step-daughter is thirteen. They are both on Facebook, and can read every word I write. Before my now-toddler son is in junior high, he’s likely to have one, too.

They see my entire virtual life go by. If I repost a link to funny missing cat signs, they’re on it. If I give a shout-out to a snuff story with surprisingly poetic language, they’re off to read that, too. There is no division, despite the fact that anyone who knows me in real life each sees a drastically different mask and not the melded wad of personality traits that show in my online profile. No one sees the whole package in person; yet I’m totally exposed on the Internet, where even strangers can find out too much.

There’s always the option, I can hear you thinking, to choose not to post certain things. Of course there is.

But the more I’ve spread my wings in the writing world, the more I’ve come to realize that nobody wants to read stuffy third-person crap that I’ve carefully polished. It’s fake, and there’s enough instantly-available, killer writing in the world that everyone knows it. People come now for a person-to-person experience, and expect to get to know each other. They want flavor, and if you don’t have it, they move on. There are too many other blogs, too many other friends of friends of friends to visit. The network doesn’t have boundaries; there’s nothing to keep a pet reader other than wit and talent.

The problem is that suddenly, everyone you’ve ever known is in that reader pool.

Years ago, you could sit with your family at Thanksgiving and gloss over the fact that you changed a few names and published the tale your mother told you about all of her sexual fantasies. You could completely pretend it hadn’t happened because really, what were the chances that word would get back?

Not now. Nope.

Some co-worker of yours probably knows someone who went to high school with someone else who goes to church with your mother and has added her on MySpace, Twitter, or any of a thousand other websites.

So what do we do?

Case in point: I’m enough of a chickenshit that I almost struck the “mother’s sexual fantasies” bit above, and there’s not any personal truth in that in the slightest. My mother’s very conservative, and wouldn’t get anywhere close to having that conversation with me, even as an adult with three kids of my own and a rock-solid marriage.

I write whatever I want. I don’t edit myself to please anyone, be that family, friends, or even myself. I spill it all on the page and go. It’s all left there.

But when I’m looking at a batch of stories ready for submission out into the world, I can’t sit here and tell you that this whole issue isn’t something that figures in to which pieces leave the roost and which get thrown back in the shoebox. I wonder sometimes whether anyone will find those stories after I’m dead, and how wonderfully that will go over if they do. I almost wish I could see that.

Many writers are braver than me. They’ll throw those pieces to editors first, because they recognize that passion is born of reality, and reality is violently messy. And those writers are dead right.

If you’re comfortable with something you’ve written, it probably sucks.

Yet no one can make us as uncomfortable as our families. That’s what they’re for. Watch any Thanksgiving episode of any sitcom. It happens.

That’s the real question I’m asking. As a parent, as a sibling, as the adult child of someone else who will likely be hurt by your actions—how do you marry the two worlds?

Can you rant angrily about a personal family battle and then brag that it sold to Publication X in your profile, knowing it’s going to devastate a full quarter of the relatives that read it?

Or do you keep that story for a later date when everyone’s dead and miss some possibly fantastic career moves and friendships, all under the banner of emotional safety?

Or, and in my head, this is worse, do you submit and publish the piece, but tell no one?

I’m not blogging about this because I pretend to have any sort of answer. I have no clue.

I want to know: what do you do?