On Neuroauthenticity

A brief essay in conversation with Neuronasty: A Poetics, AWP Seattle 2023.

Be the tree. Photo by author.

I. A logic

1. Neuronasty is a poetics at least partially defined by unfiltered neurodivergence in subject &/or style &/or form.
2. I have not traditionally considered myself nasty in the sense this poetics appears to demand, nor is this an area I’m presently targeting for personal growth.
3. I, too, would like to write into, from, and about my neurodivergence without hesitation or shame.
4. I would also like to consider legibility in my work, at least to some degree.
5. There really ought to be a term that encompasses how I want to write without excluding those writers more inclined to pure neuronastiness.
6. Working Definitions:
   Neuroauthentic /nʊˌroʊəˈθɛntɪk/ adj. 1. A piece written however the author feels best expresses their internal experience on the page.
   Neuroauthenticity /nʊˌroʊ ˌɔθənˈtɪsɪti/ n. 1. A mode of writing in which a writer can be entirely neuronasty, if so inclined, but which may also embrace the use of traditional structures as either a) methods of translation, b) delivery mechanisms, or c) other.
7. In evaluating neuroauthenticity, the particular techniques or topics in a piece matter less than the impetus behind them: if a writer feels obligated, constrained, or otherwise pressured to hew to traditional norms, then the resulting piece wouldn’t be wholly neuroauthentic—if they wrote the exact same piece for their own reasons, though, whatever those might be? That one would.
8. Accordingly, nobody but the author can judge whether a particular work is neuroauthentic, and it’s frankly offensive to try.

II. Some practical thoughts, and a call to action.

Mainstream publications may not recognize the value in more
neurodivergent work—whether they reject it, or pigeonhole it as experimental, or try to edit it into some other box, they seem to
subconsciously want it to be something other than what it is. And of course
they do. Such work takes an unfamiliar path to emotional resonance—it is
not, that is to say, written for them. In fact, it is often written in blatant
disregard of those literary conventions they, as gatekeepers, have a stake in
maintaining.

That’s the trade-off neurodivergent writers face: balancing the joy of unfettered self-expression against the rejection that may follow. To disregard the reality of this is to expect those same people who don’t understand how you think in everyday life to recognize and value those thoughts in your work—you may as well insist on writing in Sanskrit, or skipping every third word, or using only conjunctions.

We identify as neurodivergent because we recognize that, on some level,
our patterns of thought diverge from how the statistically standard person
perceives the world.

But this is the beginning of the question, not its end.

To take it a step further, given that you want to be true to yourself—to some
degree—and that you want to be understood by a broader readership—to
some, greater or lesser, degree—how is it that you want to write? Rather
than whether we should represent our neurodivergence on the page, it’s
“how do we represent it in a way that feels true to our individual selves?”

For my part, my desire to speak cannot be divorced from my need to be
heard, so I must at least consider the reader. Writing is to me an act of translation—it feels neuroauthentic to package my thoughts for easier
consumption, and both my voice and my pride have found this a tolerable
détente. To others, it may seem a bridge too far, whether in compromising
too much or communicating too little—and for others, it may be.

To complicate the matter, neuroauthenticity also raises questions of craft.
As traditional structures favor neurotypical thought patterns (see note at end), certain techniques may portray neurodivergence more effectively—fragmentation, repetition, ambiguity, etc.—each with their particular occasion and effect, able as they are to represent unfamiliar patterns of thought.

Neuroauthenticity presents as a spectrum, because neurodiversity itself is a spectrum — and, as with neurodivergence, there’s no wrong place to be. Whether you use rigorously formal structure and read in poetic voice or eschew linebreaks and scream into the void, if it is honest it is right. Neuronastiness is right. Neurodivergence is right. Neurotypicality is right. Every sort of writing can be right because a writer’s authentic voice is never wrong. It is, after all, all we have.

Note at end: I hesitate to label conventional techniques “neurotypical,” but they have historically been processed well by neurotypical people so what I label them isn’t really relevant; if a writer decides not to use them, they’re taking the long way around. Identifying as neurodivergent can sometimes mitigate the practical effect of this, but the question of whether to self-identify raises its own tricky questions and is well beyond the scope of this essay.