There is writing that alters, puts a reader’s heart on pause. Makes them feel as if they’re standing alongside you. And then there’s writing that erects walls. A kind of writing that spits when it speaks. It’s work meant for you and you alone, yet many people attempt to pass it off as prose.
I’ll be blunt—a rage blackout on the page does not age well. It’s myopic and small and loses the one thing that great work carries: perspective. And while there is an advantage to writing hot because you’re in the zone and have something to say, you’ll notice when you let it cool it loses some of its luster. It feels like a page stripped from a diary.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with diary writing. In fact, journaling is a powerful tool to practice. Often, it’s a safe space where writers can experiment. It’s a place of play. Virginia Woolf’s early experiments lead to the work that cemented her name:
“Between 1915 and her death in 1941, Woolf filled almost thirty notebooks with diary entries, beginning, at first, with a fairly self-conscious account of her daily life which developed, from Asheham onward, into an extraordinary, continuous record of form and feeling. Her diary was the place where she practiced writing—or would “do my scales,” as she described it in 1924—and in which her novels shaped themselves: the “escapade” of Orlando written at the height of her feelings for Vita Sackville-West (“I want to kick up my heels & be off”); the “playpoem” of The Waves, that “abstract mystical eyeless book,” which began life one summer’s evening in Sussex as “The Moths.”
There are also the minutiae of her domestic life, including scenes from her marriage to Leonard (an argument in 1928, for instance, when she slapped his nose with sweet peas, and he bought her a blue jug) and from her relationship with her servant, Nellie Boxall, which was by turns antagonistic and dependent. Most of all, the diary is the place in which she thinks on her feet, playing and experimenting.”
Writing connects people. Someone reads something and they feel something; they can relate to it. Or, maybe it angers and provokes them. Perhaps it educates and informs them. Or possibly it simply entertains them, and we need more of that in our dark times. But that connection is cultivated if the story speaks to the larger moments and experiences rather than a petty beef or a score you’re desperate to settle.
I write a lot of essays, and some of them exemplify what I’m feeling in the moment. They’re visceral. Some are rife with anger, others are sad, and it’s only when I have time and space from it that I can go back and edit because now I have perspective on the situation. I’m no longer in it and I have the vantage point of writing about it from having endured it. I also have more empathy for all parties involved—even if I don’t like said parties.
When my memoir was published, Kirkus noted that my book was one of the rare ones of the time where the writer didn’t navel-gaze. It was a story where I wasn’t painted as a martyr or saint—I was flawed, angry, sometimes bitchy, bitter. And while I had much to be angry and bitter about, I had the perspective of understanding that my upbringing is a reason not an excuse. I can’t blame my mother for everything but I can see how my traumatic childhood influenced the choices I made.
The trick was to sever the cycle and and own up to the people I hurt as an adult. People who never knew my mother. People who didn’t deserve the hurt I inflicted on them.
My only regret is that I used my mother’s real name. That tells me I didn’t have enough time and distance to respect her privacy. And although she was a monster, every human being deserves some semblance of dignity and respect.
There’s this terrible quote some writers lean on about acting right to avoid getting named in someone’s work. I find that petty and childish. Revenge writing doesn’t elevate your work, it reduces it.
Rarely do I ever use people’s names in my work because the essays aren’t about them. I’m writing my capital T truth not theirs. A few months ago, I wrote about the hurt I experienced by my pop humiliating me. Never once did I mention his name or any identifiable details. Sure, if people had time on their hands and wanted to sleuth they can find out his first name, but I make a point to respect the players in my work because I would want that same empathy and compassion.
Unless you’re a journalist or a whistleblower, you need not name names in narrative non-fiction. You need not shame or demean the people who’ve marked you. You need not “sub-tweet” them because that anger is ephemeral and nothing ephemeral lasts.
In an 1962 interview with Peter Orr of the The British Council, Sylvia Plath notes:
“I would not say that at all. I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have, but I must say I cannot sympathise with these cries from the heart that are informed by nothing except a needle or a knife, or whatever it is. I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrific, like madness, being tortured, this sort of experience, and one should be able to manipulate these experiences with an informed and an intelligent mini I think that personal experience is very important, but certainly it shouldn't be a kind of shut-box and mirror looking, narcissistic experience. I believe it should be relevant, and relevant to the larger things, the bigger things such as Hiroshima and Dachau and so on.”
Granted, we knew all Sylvia’s later poems were about her husband, her struggles with mental illness, and being a young mother. However, if you read “Daddy” or “Tulips” or any one of her Ariel poems, the poems are about so much more than the daily goings-on in her life. She elevates her personal experience to art, and one does this by asking how one’s experience can connect to the larger things in life. What images, events, or experiences can be used that people can immediately see and feel? It also breaths air into a story where others can insert themselves and hold varying interpretations of events because you’ve expanded the scope beyond yourself, your anger, your score-settling.
Even though your work may be about you, it’s also not about you. Ultimately, it becomes about the reader who engages with it, immerses themselves in it.
When I wrote this essay about my pop, although it was something in which I physically wrote in the span of an hour, I’d been writing this story for months. Maybe years. I’ve been feeling our distance for years and how our relationship slowly disintegrated. I wrote earlier drafts on Medium that weren’t that good and thought of drafts in my head that were a bit better. So, when I finally sat down to write that particular essay on that particular day it was a culmination of feelings that I’ve examined over time.
While you can feel some anger on the page, it’s not as much anger as it is grief. It’s a stage of emotion where you can look at the totality of an event or a relationship and see the wreckage of it. The essay was less about how angry I was about him for using me as a punchline but it was losing someone I considered a father, a man I’ve known for nearly the whole of my life.
And I didn’t need to air all his “dirty laundry” to convey what was lost. I did this by focusing on our relationship and the respective roles we played and anything exterior to that was necessary context. All the fat had been trimmed. Because if I wrote from anger I would’ve composed the Encyclopedia Brittanica of Petty.
The anger was for me alone. The anger was invariably, as Plath notes, to be manipulated and controlled in the service of a greater story.
You can write your rage blackout stories. Do that. Get it out. I do it. But I’ve learned to move a lot of that writing offline so I can refine it over time and decide if it’s something I want to put my name on.
Everything I write I ask myself, would you be proud to have your name associated with this? I hold my writing to a high standard. I’ve deleted many essays, newsletters, etc. because I want to be remembered by the art I try to put out in the world rather than the rage I feel for other people.
Some of you have asked for an update on The Knee Fuckery of 2023, and it is indeed fuckery on the highest levels. Apparently, the ER techs botched my MRI so my orthopedist couldn’t read or understand any of the notes. He tried to drain the fluid from knee and I screamed so loud I possibly scarred him for life. In my defense, you try dealing with a needle hitting bone. I’m going in for another MRI tomorrow. I have two severely torn muscles and a fractured kneecap. The good news is they don’t actually require surgery—just a brace, crutches and physical therapy for the foreseeable future. The bad news is if the MRI reveals I have a torn ACL, I will need surgery. So, wish me luck because I don’t know how I’ll be able to cope with a surgery I can’t afford.
A few of you have asked about my financial situation. It continues to be fucked but I’m trying, with every fiber of my being, to be less fatalistic. I’ve been watching The Shining on repeat and that helps. A few folks on Medium have asked if they can donate to the Felicia Knee fund and I feel so ICK about this on so many levels I can’t even explain. But if you’re so inclined, here’s my PayPal link. And I’m paying every single person back once I get a gig because I AM NOT A FAN OF this sort of thing. No judgment on people who do because our healthcare system is bonkers.
Felix continues to prosper. I’m going to wait until I get back to L.A. so he can see his normal vet for a follow-up, but he has been gaining weight. And he’s violently pissed I can’t play with him 24/7 because of said knee fuckery. You try explaining alienation of belly rubs to a tabby cat.