Probably not a good idea, at least so all of the writing experts tell us. But why, or why not? I’ve heard it quoted that ‘all novels are autobiographical,’ which makes sense given that any and every line one writes tells much about the writer, no matter what that writer’s intention may have been. Every word you write reveals something about you. But you never have a chance to explain or give your own interpretation to your writing. Once it is out in the world, readers will see in your writing what they wish to see. Even if it is a true event which they would prefer (and you would also have preferred, for that matter) were not true, or a time when you wondered if you yourself might not be some alien artifact merely sent here to record these odd human goings-on, or if you always thought that life might be some gross diabolical experiment, or maybe even just a fun bet, between two or more un-empathetic beings or species. Every word your write will pass through the filter of each and every person who reads those words, and thus be judged according to someone else’s experiences and ways of thinking. From a light-skinned Black child being taunted as ‘white’ by other Black kids, painful for that child, but reduced to whining angst by others, to the fear of a woman that she might be seen as dating across races being turned into mere criticism of interracial dating or marriage. Our experiences and the thoughts and feelings within those events are always subject to interpretation, measurement, being weighed in the balance, and found wanting by others who have not experienced those or similar things. The feeling of lost opportunities when potential and ought-to-have-been alliances turn out to be physical aggressions of the first order, all downgraded to a mere fight. The feeling, when told to take care because your skin is just the right color to get you excluded from every group you have ever even heard of, judged to be simple self-pity. Your desire to explain that not a single human being ever born has a “pure” bloodline, wiped out by those who simply want you to suffer because you are a convenient target, when they are in fact, acting in precise accord with the racists from the other side who also agree that “the races don’t mix.” The irony and the agony of being a human being, when it is all so clearly an exercise in futility, just as the writer of Kohelet, aka Ecclesiastes, said so long ago: “הבל” / “emptiness” -it may all really be emptiness, but we must keep trying, anyway.
Shira
Action Items:
1.) Share your thoughts, please.
2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.
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Learning through TV or Film story:
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Learning in the obvious way: Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,
Thoughtful Reading Writers, please consider reading and then also writing something about #ProjectDoBetter. Phase I includes freely sharing with others about how consumer debt related Statutes of Limitations are meant to protect society, if only everyone knew about them. The work is still heavy, and the workers are still few. But we human beings can still seriously Do Better.
Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS
ShiraDest (and by the way, I have written several narratives about these incidents mentioned above, if anyone wants me to link in to them either by editing this post, or in the comments to this post later… Just let me know in a comment here.)
Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.