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The Narrative Arc
Deconstructing Shame, One Word at a Time
Writing about writing about that thing I can’t write about
In 2011 I first wrote about my addiction and incarceration. After my mom clipped an essay contest ad from a magazine.
Before a fancy awards dinner, finalists spent the day in brutal peer-review workshops. Because the material was so raw and vulnerable, I thought my fellow writers would be …. gentler.
Literary lashing notwithstanding, I won first place — the award a panacea for my brittle and battered ego.
Laying bare my life like that was akin to stripping naked before an audience. Petrifying but liberating, exhilarating.
The Dallas Morning News requested an excerpt, and I ran the idea by my boss, a locally well-known magazine publisher who might be disgraced by association. Even after I hyperbolized the potential downside, both he and my family encouraged me to go for it. It seemed earth-shattering at the time.
Now I write openly about intimate matters.
Sometimes delving into such personal business stirs up an inner funk, a self-revulsion that’s hard to stomach. In most cases, the process of packaging my pain results in relief.
