others: part 1
INVESTIGATION
When I was a kid and dealing with uncertainty, I’d vent to my dad about it. He’d listen - or space out: it was hard to see his eyes set in deep, dark circles that his genes passed down to me, behind his big hippie glasses. He’d sit with his hands folded on his belly, watching me talk. He’d usually give me some kind of advice at the end, quote Socrates or Plato or something, and then offer one of his favorite southern landings: It’ll all work out, one way or another. Then he’d laugh at himself.
While this sounds like a platitude, it’s a bit darker than that. It means: things will either get better or way worse; you’ll live through it or die; you can’t control the outcome. It’s a hard truth to sit with, but it’s also a sentiment that reverberates through wisdoms, both religious and secular. The Christian folks out there say things like it’s in God’s hands, and the Buddhist folks out there say things like life is suffering, and the agnostic/atheist folks out there say things like be here, now. There’s also the serenity prayer about accepting the things you cannot change, changing the things you can, and having the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s hard to sit with uncertainty, to accept it, to rest in it. In my life, I’ve found it incredibly bright to do so, almost joyful. If we are going to send our stories into the world, it’s a necessary grapple in so many ways, not least of all when we consider writing about others.
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Everyone but you is an “other” - someone separate, someone else, and you will write their stories, one way or another. This seems obvious, but it is incredibly important that we, as writers who presume to write the truths (plural) about our lives/the lives of others, dig as deep as we possibly can into the all the facets of how we interact with the other in our writing.
An other is not a bad or good thing, necessarily. Just: separate.
How and when do we respect the experiences and perceptions of someone else? Especially if they are misaligned with our perceptions and experiences?
Does how marginalized they are compared to the writer matter? When and how does it matter?
What if they have hurt us? What if we have hurt them?
How do we avoid objectifying other people?
How do we write their humanity?
Can we write someone else's body? Can we write someone else's war zone?
Where do we show humility and confidence when writing about, beside, or for someone else?
…
Even if we start with really good intentions, we very often smash into our own blindspots. I've certainly done it. The most illustrative examples, I think, start in antiquity.
Hippocrates is the person responsible, at least we think, for the do no harm oath that doctors have to take. He also wrote about the wandering womb, calling it an animal within an animal. In a nutshell, we have some reason to believe that at several different points throughout history, women's ailments were caused by her womb, flitting around inside of her, making her sick or crazy or even killing her. Aristotle, known to lots of folks as a "father of logic" or the person who helped us all learn how to think, described the bodies of women as deformed males. And that's just a couple examples from a LONG time ago of some thinking people who wanted to offer a lot to the world, and in many ways succeeded. In other ways, they kinda fucked it up for people with “wombs.”
So, after I’ve written the thing (my essay, memoir, whatever). I review my own work with the following in mind.
1. First, no harm.
How can we be both fair and tell ALL the truths that MUST be told?
2. Adamantly search for our own blind spots.
We don't want to be Hippocrates, right? However we can't get stuck looking for what we cannot see. A lot of this work comes from gathering many readers from various backgrounds, learning to sit with and meditate on critiques we receive, and finding the heart of our own work and trusting it.
If this all seems big and scary DON'T WORRY. The page is an AMAZING place to work through all of this.
But first, let’s look at how some other writers dealt with this:
EXPLORATION
Read:
What Really Happened by Madge McKeithan in TriQuarterly Review
The Ethics of Writing About Other People by Philip Lopate in Creative Nonfiction
ACTIVITY
There are two short assignments this month and next month designed to HELP you with this.
ONE
This month's first assignment is an activity that you can use over and over again to explore your own perception, your psyche, and how you bring your others onto the page.
TWO
Next month: I like to think about writing about others like bedside manner. Doctors are trained to deliver the truth in a way that their patients can hear it, in a way that really lands with them. That's your job too, as a writer. To deliver the truth in a way that the people who need to hear it, can. In a way that lands.
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If you feel apprehension, fear, or resistance when writing about others, imagine yourself reaching out to them. This can be a brutal imagining. This month's second assignment will dig further into this.
In this assignment, you will copy McKeithen's style from their essay from TriQuarterly in order to write one scene OR one story that includes someone else. Check below for the craft, how to embed approaches from our readings, and some prompts to get the first line on the page.
the CRAFT
In their essay, they write in the style of a how-to manual. An easy way to start is to think about the drop in moment, like we did in our previous assignments.
step ONE
Think about the moment that things changed. This can be as light or as deep as you want to go.
EX (you can pick one of these or come up with your own)
The moment, during a holiday meal, when you stopped yourself from snapping at a relative with vastly different political beliefs from you.
The moment you left a job interview you bombed.
The moment you realized someone who has passed away is really gone.
The moment you realized that you had to set a boundary with someone you love.
The moment you finished your first marathon.
The moment you met a pet you really connected with.
Now that you have your moment, write it at the top of your page. Under that, write 5-10 sentences.
Sentence one should start with :: This moment really meant that...
Under that sentence, every additional sentence should begin with :: But actually, that moment really meant that/showed me/I learned that/etc