The Importance of Writing Your Truth
By: Tom Johnson
Tags: Writing, Productivity, Self Improvement, Creativity, Writing Tips

The Importance of Writing Your Truth

And why it’s often the hardest thing to do

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash.

The other day, I wrote a story about the time I auditioned to play drums with the BoDeans. On the surface, it seemed like a worthy writing topic. This was my brush with greatness, a chance to join a major label band that had just spent a year opening for U2 on their Joshua Tree tour.

The story remains unpublished. After writing it up, I shared it with someone close to me, and she conveyed that it lacked a certain authenticity.

“It sounds like you’re bragging,” my friend said. “You talk about all of these bands you’ve played with and the showcases you’ve done. For you to come across as dismissive about not getting into the BoDeans…don’t you understand how people would kill for those experiences? That everyone fantasizes about being a rock star?”

What I failed to include in my story, she said, was a telling of how much work went into getting the audition in the first place, the gratitude I felt for having the opportunity, the anxiety I experienced leading up to the audition, the personal pain I felt for being passed over.

“You didn’t say how you really felt about it,” she continued. “You left out the human aspects — all those rehearsals, the relationships, the camaraderie. It’s like you skipped over the most important parts.”

To illustrate her point, my friend reminded me of a story told to us by Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, when we saw her speak a few years ago. The book documented Walls’s experiences growing up as the daughter of dysfunctional parents. The family moved frequently and lived in abject poverty. As Walls escaped to college and a career in business, her parents slid into mental instability and homelessness. The title of her book refers to her father’s eternal promises of building his dream house for them: a “glass castle.”

Walls shared that when she first submitted her manuscript, it was greeted with a cool reception. Her agent said the story was compelling, but Walls’s treatment of it was detached and superficial. A rote retelling of her experiences wasn’t sufficient. The agent needed to know what Walls really felt and thought. The editor wanted to know her truth.

But telling the truth can be difficult and painful.

“I had the impulse to tell it,” Walls said. “But there were times I had to tell myself no one would read it, or else I couldn’t be as honest as I wanted to be. I went back and forth between the impulse to tell it, and the impulse to give in to fear and shame.”

Walls wrote her first draft in six weeks and then spent the next five years rewriting. When she finally got it right—when she told her truth—the story resonated with readers. The Glass Castle sold millions of copies, spending more than 260 weeks on The New York Times hardcover bestseller list and 440 weeks on the paperback nonfiction bestseller list. The book was eventually made into a movie starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts.

The Snapshot Technique

Walls’s words echoed a passage I encountered in editor Sol Stein’s book, Stein on Writing. Stein describes his Snapshot Technique, an exercise designed to help writers whose work fails to touch the emotion of readers.

“I ask the author to think of a snapshot of something so private he wouldn't carry it in his wallet because if he were in an accident, he wouldn't want a paramedic to find it,” Stein writes. “The snapshot we're looking for is one the writer wouldn't want his neighbor or closest friend to see. Not even a family member. Especially not a family member.”

Stein continues:

“If your reaction to this exercise is ‘my secrets are nobody’s business,’ that's understandable. But if you want to write something that will move other people, you have to come to terms with the fact that the writer is by profession a squealer. He learns by starting to squeal on himself.”

The best snapshots, Stein says, are embarrassing, revelatory, or involve a strong and continuing stimulus to memory. If you’re willing to carry a particular snapshot in your wallet, it might not be worth writing about.

“Readers don't want to see your photo album. They have their own. They want to see what's in the picture you're reluctant to show.” — Sol Stein

Most writers would recoil from writing about their deepest fears, their most embarrassing moments, and especially their shame. But that is exactly what Stein recommends and Walls’s agent asked her to do.

Getting in touch with her personal truth required Walls to discard the lies she’d been telling herself in order to cope with her awful family situation. She needed to honor her emotions and offer up her truth for others to judge. She needed to acknowledge her shame and make herself vulnerable to others. Most importantly, she needed to be vulnerable to herself.

Learning to tell the truth

Walls’s example, my friend suggested, was a roadmap for what I needed to do with my BoDeans piece. And she’s right. My telling of the story was superficial and descriptive; that’s why it had fallen flat. The snapshot of my audition — the one I wrote about and had shared with others for years — was one that I willingly carried around in my wallet, unafraid that others might find it. That’s not the story people want to read. They want to know my truth.

But writing the truth requires pushing aside our protective fictions and looking deeper. It requires honesty and introspection and vulnerability. My ability to do this remains a work in progress. I have spent a lifetime walling off my failures and weaknesses, afraid that others would judge me and ashamed that they might see me for who I really am. Or even more frightening, that I might see myself for who I really am.

The lies we tell other people are nothing compared to the lies we tell ourselves. — Derek Landy

Through my writing, I’ve learned that sharing truths can be therapeutic. By facing shame and weakness—by making ourselves vulnerable—the heavy loads we carry around are lightened. With each exposure to our most private snapshots, their ability to harm us is reduced.

Vulnerability can also provide an opportunity for human connection—and connection has the power to deepen the moment and build trust. That’s likely why Walls’s story resonated with so many people. Hearing her authentic story allowed people in; they could empathize, or at least appreciate and understand.

“Vulnerability,” Brenee Brown writes, is “having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage. People who wade into discomfort and vulnerability and tell the truth about their stories are the real badasses.”

I know this to be objectively true. The stories I’ve written where I allow myself to be vulnerable are the ones that enjoy the most views and feedback. The responses I receive from readers confirm that a connection was made.

I have set my BoDeans story aside and will return to it when I am ready to face the true version of those events head-on. In the meantime, I will challenge myself to look beneath the surface for the truths in each story I write.