By Joanne C. Hillhouse
I’ve always been a very private person. To answer a common
question, everything I write is not autobiographical, though life does bleed
into the fiction. But mining my life for fiction is one thing. I’ve grown
comfortable with that because very often what makes it onto the page bears
little resemblance to what happened in the first place. It’s an emotional echo
not a literal rendering of the thing that inspired it. Often by the time I
write it, or by the time I get through the rounds of redrafting and editing, I
have distance and perspective. Of course, there are times when something is
still fresh and hews closer to the bone and writing it hurts, but that’s okay
too; a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the craft that is also my therapy and
the medium through which I process life.
Writing, when I can write, saves me; giving something of
myself up to that process is a small price to pay. And because of what it
reveals to me – and others – when I get it right, is no price at all. Writing is
a gift and I pray each day to have the courage to go where it takes me. As
Antigua and Barbuda’s most renowned author, Jamaica Kincaid, once said artistes
to get to the sweet spot need to “lose shame” and on the page I can be
shameless and, to reference another of Antigua and Barbuda’s writers of note,
Althea Prince, “Write! Write as if no one is going to read it.”
But then there is publishing and twin to that, promoting.
One I pursued aggressively, the other I forced myself to accept as a
consequence of that choice. If you’re publishing, you’re promoting. Full stop.
I didn’t get that right away (or perhaps couldn’t give myself over to the
inherent narcissism of self-promotion) but, in the interest of reaching more
readers, I’ve done my best to put myself out there, especially with the release
of my third book and first full length novel Oh Gad! Social media has
been my low-to-no budget-but-time-consuming frenemy in this regard. From
blogging to facebook, newsletters to networks, I’ve done my best to get the
word out and keep the buzz going about this book and other activities in my
literary life.
Inevitably, the line between what’s strictly private and
what’s public has blurred.
The thing I still struggle to come to terms with is how much
of your privacy you have to sacrifice to this process. You can’t just push your
work, that turns people off, you’ve got to cut off bits and pieces of yourself
and give them away as well.
Part of me thinks that that hurts the creative process –
apart from the time they take away from the writing, there’s the things that
you give away casually that you might better use on the page, creatively.
The aspect of it I’ve had to
confront more recently is the things people think they have a right to know
once you’re out there; because once you’re out there it becomes harder and
harder to be selective about what you feel comfortable sharing. A recent online
encounter was a jarring reminder of this when I was taken to task, quite
harshly, over information I didn’t, based on my conditioning, feel comfortable
sharing. That I might and have, selectively, shared it when asked is another
matter but before I could say here it is
in this instance I was taken to task. The annoyance was prompted by an online
posting on the desired information that was too coy, too tongue-in-cheek to be
tolerated.
It was posted at a time when I’d
been hit with request after request for said information from students who were
reading my book in school or perhaps were sent with a check list of information
on a local author. I was at once grateful for their interest and overwhelmed by
it. I decided to do a post with their frequently asked questions – sort of a
clearing house, based on past questions –from which they could access such
information in future. But things sometimes get lost in translation and, the
backlash via the individual encounter referenced above suggests that I was a
little too cute with my response.
I suppose it’s true that as
aggressively as I’ve promoted the published writing, I feel increasingly
protective of my privacy, and struggle to balance what to keep and what to give
away…and how to deal with unsolicited advice, commentary, and, yes, angry
emails that come when I get it all wrong.
So I guess my question to the
group is, how do you strike that
balance in this world of decreasing barriers between public and private,
especially when being expected, more and more, as writers to put not just our
writing but ourselves out there?
***
Joanne C. Hillhouse is the author of Oh Gad!, The Boy from
Willow Bend, and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight. Her fiction also appears in
three recent collections – For women: In Tribute to Nina Simone; In the Black:
New African Canadian Literature; and So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End: An
Anthology of Antiguan and Barbudan Writing. Her poetry and fiction have
appeared in Poui, the Caribbean Writer, Tongues of the Ocean, Womanspeak,
Mythium, Calabash, Ma Comère, and elsewhere. She is a native and resident of
Antigua and Barbuda. Find her online at http://jhohadli.wordpress.com
and/or http://www.facebook.com/JoanneCHillhouse
She also runs the youth writing programme, the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize; find
out more at http://wadadlipen.wordpress.com
3 comments:
I think there is a lot of wisdom in being aware of barriers-- having healthy ones in place. And I also think there is a skill of picking and choosing what to reveal and what information really isn't for public consumption. You can be authentic without being revealing.
Well considered thoughts on a complex issue. I struggle with this as well. I probably would be better to share more, but it's so hard to do. And I never know what might turn people off as well as turn them on to my work.
Thanks for your thoughts...still figuring it all out...and (mostly) liking the journey.
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