AWP 2015, Minneapolis, MN

Confronting Our Fears: Turning Adversity into Art

Introduction by Jo Scott-Coe

Seasoned memoirists know that writing about our personal misfortunes, fears, and demons can produce rich, even urgent, writing. But that is only true when we use those hardships and struggles not simply for confession or disclosure but as raw materials for creating literary works. Citing their own and others' work, five writer-teachers will offer strategies designed to show aspiring memoirists how to transform frightening, disturbing experiences into artfully crafted, shared human narratives.

Jo Scott-Coe

Michael Steinberg

Richard Hoffman

Renée E. D'Aoust

Meredith Hall

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Jo Scott-Coe (moderator)
​Introduction for Confronting Our Fears

A few years ago, Poets & Writers published a thoughtful essay by novelist Rachel Kadish. Titled “Face the Fear: A Rallying Cry for Writers,” Kadish’s piece urged struggling, discouraged writers to “stay the course” and to develop a “muscular independence,” even as the publishing world changes, even when we feel insecure.

Confirming Kadish’s best instincts, good writing teachers partner with their students to work through basic but powerful fears related to process, skill, or quality: Can I complete this work? Am I up to this particular challenge? Is there room in my life—and my checkbook—for writing? Will my work amount to anything, and how will I know? Any writer with a modicum of experience and empathy learns to help mentees follow through and endure, emphasizing practice, revision, intestinal fortitude, even the formation of supportive networks.

But there are other fears, too, related to subject matter and self-or-other exposure. What about those?

The fears Kadish addresses so well can emerge under specific conditions at fairly predictable times in any writer’s career, in any genre, based on stages of development, perceived levels of status and professional success, and the practical struggles related to individual projects. But a second layer of fear constitutes a particularly excruciating domain within the genre of nonfiction. When we write down our thoughts or experiences about intimate topics, our anxieties speak directly to content itself: Do I want to share this story at all? Am I ready to share it as literary art, or only as personal revelation? Even further, am I ready to confront audience expectations about this material? Do I have (and will I claim) permission and a voice in telling this story?

At least two factors make the latter questions extra challenging. First, our highly sensational culture equates personal revelation with shorthand notions of “therapy.” Second, a public appetite for confession suggests that the job of the personal essayist or memoirist is merely to document how s/he has “out-suffered” other writers—or even the reader—in order to reach the highest level of art. The idea of competitive suffering in workshop was brilliantly satirized in Christy Vannoy’s “A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay,” originally published in McSweeney’s and selected by Edwidge Danticat for inclusion in Best American Essays 2011. Vannoy’s essay begins with the following lines: “I am a personal essay and I was born with a port wine stain and beaten by my mother. A brief affair with a second cousin produced my first and only developmentally disabled child. Years of painful infertility would lead me straight into menopause and the hysterectomy I almost didn’t survive.” How can we compete with that? It’s a fearsome proposition. As Vannoy’s essay reduces its own claims to a beautiful, horrifying absurdity, we see how both suffering and art are denigrated and rendered banal by sensationalism.  

Finally, while writing may certainly play a role in clinically therapeutic processes for grief, recovery, or self-discovery, we should question the casual notion that writers compose works about suicide, murder, abuse, miscarriage, divorce (or a host of other grave topics) in order to “get therapy.” This rather lazy assumption damages the reading-writing exchange because it assumes that tragic or horrifying personal details are inherently artistic on the page due to their most superficially “scary” or “upsetting” qualities. But the notion also underestimates and mischaracterizes serious therapy by any definition and encourages writers simply to “expose themselves,” without considering context, consequences, or a bigger picture.

As writers and writing teachers, each of us has confronted these fears at different times and for various reasons. In the series of essays that follows—essays first presented on our panel at AWP 2015—we explore scenarios, pose more questions, and suggest a range of ways to examine and navigate the tricky terrain of nonfiction.

Notes

Kadish, Rachel. “Face the Fear: A Rallying Cry for Writers.” Poets & Writers
Sept./Oct. 2010: 31-34. Print.

Vannoy, Christy. “A Personal Essay by a Personal Essay.” Best American Essays             2011. Ed. Edwidge Danticat. Series ed. Robert Atwan. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011.
210-212. Print.

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Confronting Our Fears, Continued.

Jo Scott-Coe
Confronting Our Fears

Meredith Hall
​Trust The Camera: The Importance of Scene Making in Writing Literary Memoirs

Richard Hoffman
Turning Adversity into Art

Renée E. D'Aoust
​A Bridge from Life to the Page

Michael Steinberg
​Confronting Demons, Staring Down Fears: Transforming Our Deepest Misfortunes into in Literary Works