Honestly Offensive

Driving to work today I was listening to an interview with John Updike (thanks Joe), and he mentioned that being a good writer meant being courageous and ruthless enough to be honest.

True dat.

I find myself struggling with that a lot in my writing.

I don’t mean being truthful with real events. I’ve never been much of a liar -– what’s the use, really? And I’m certainly no Million Little Pieces fraud trying to impress the world with my memoirs.

What I mean is being honest with a character, a story.

Maybe it was my white-bread upbringing, but I think I subconsciously worry about hurting people all the time. I’ll be writing a scene, and highlight a character’s flaws, and my first instinct many times is to soften the flaw or resolve it right away.

But reality, and people, and relationships, and life, and love -– all the good stuff that’s interesting in the world and worth writing about –- it’s all dirty and messy and weird and flawed like a motherfucker.

So why hide it or sugarcoat? Am I such a dork that I worry about insulting a character? Or even a viewer/reader who might identify with the character?

Sometimes I find myself worrying that someone I love might think something is based on them and then take offense, so I pull it back. And often it is. Based on them, I mean, or on a situation we shared. But it’s just BASED on them -– the real person or event gave me the jumping-off point, and then I made it something else.

It’s like in Biloxi Blues when Eugene’s bunkmates find his journal and read it aloud. It mentions them, even by name, and he paints no one in a flattering light. He tells them it’s all bullshit, just stuff he makes up, fiction he weaves from reality threads, but they don’t believe him.

And so I tend to chicken out in first drafts. I worry my wife might think a certain character is her, or my daughter might read meaning into a situation that I don’t mean to be a reflection of or comment on our real life.

I’m getting better, though. I’m trying anyway. Often I can catch myself and stop being so damn polite. And that’s when things can get interesting.

Because good writing has to be honest, and honesty is ruthless, and life is ruthless, and good writing is life.

I mean, you've seen Six Feet Under, right? That's some unbelieveably good writing -- the best on TV in my opinion -- and fucked up as anything... like life.

By the way, sorry Mr. James Frey. Didn’t mean to offend.