In comments on a recent post, two of my readers discussed something they sensed in my post. The word they used was "hate."
Hate? What hate? I went back to my post and read it again. Once. Twice. I dissected the first paragraph. Then the second. I was looking for Hate in the content, in the grammar, in the language. This, I knew, can be a great learning opportunity. If I understood how I conveyed a strong feeling like Hate without intending it, I could potentially learn how to better convey intended feelings.
I started with the content. The post was about a weekend birthday picnic that had all the right ingredients to make it great, but truly wasn't; a birthday celebration that turned into a near silence-treatment of a friend whose suitor wasn't acceptable to her friends.
I moved to language and grammar. Not my usual short and cut sentences. A little lacking on tightness. A bit long perhaps. Short on humor and my usual connect-a-dot 10-words-making-a-single-word style but nothing dramatic enough to evoke a sense of Hate. But two people stating the same feeling can’t be an outlier data point…so where is it?!?
And then I remembered something important.
Almost a full year ago, when I had just started to blog, I read a blogger's advice column (which I now wish I had kept for reference). One bulleted heading stuck with me. Keep it real. It (roughly) said. Your readers will always know if you try to bullshit them. They'll know it before you'll know it.
And I knew it wasn't about the content of the post and it had little to do with my language or grammar. What my readers referred to was my state which did, in retrospect, have elements of Hate. It was a special kind of hate- the highly familiar, almost toxic, ever so subtle- self hate.
What did I hate? I hated being part of a group that got together to celebrate a friend’s birthday only to talk about her in her absence. I hated my own disapproval of my friend's choice of a boyfriend. I hated the sense of desperation oozed out of her- or maybe it was my own. More than anything, I hated that I was just like the others- proud and indignant, neck deep in a noxious exchange of events and facts.
All this I know now- but I didn’t know that’s what I felt at the time I wrote the post- I was just writing about an experience- amused and a tad exceptive. But my readers, you see, they knew there was something else there- they picked up on it. They sensed it in my tight jaw and bitten lips through my fingers and off of the screen.
You experienced a similar notion yourself, I’m sure. You read, or heard, or saw something and your mind goes “that’s not quite right.” It tells you there’s something more. It’s a sort of an incongruence- a dissonance that comes through in a sense that you can’t quite explain.
But don't known down dissonance just yet- it can also be very powerful. Think of a recent thriller or suspense movie you saw. You see an image of a perfect family- a couple and their adorable two children in a lovely home, wearing lovely clothes, driving lovely cars…but something keeps you from sinking into that picture. Your back is tight, your hearing sharpened for the slightest sound to come. Maybe it’s the camera angle- it’s too close or too far or above the scene- never quite right. Maybe it’s the dark, blue colors of the film. Maybe it’s the music in the background- a building sound that never quite relaxes. Whatever it is- you know. You just know: it’s not what it seems.
Readers know- they have a sort of a radar. When what’s on paper isn’t what’s in the writer’s mind, a dot starts flickering and the radar goes "Bleep." In the good-case scenario, you actually wrote from the heart (or at least you thought you did) and your readers will simply state that they sensed something else in your writing. In the bad-case scenario, they’ll tell you what you write is total bullshit and even have facts to back it up (“remember when you wrote….?!? It’s not what you’re saying now!”). But the real ugly case scenario is that they’ll feel they can no longer connect to you and click away to another blog that touches their Keep-It-Real cords. If you're extra lucky, they might be back the following week to check if you've snapped back into Real shape.
You can invent your stories and your characters or you can make it all about you--but whatever you do, make sure that it comes from a real place and know that whatever going on in your head will end up coming through whether or not you actively put it there.
Yours truly,
Datingirl
Awesome post. I would never click away from your blog and never come back. I love the way that you write and tell stories. That particular post did not seem like your normal self.
Take Care
Posted by: TJ | June 09, 2006 at 12:05 PM