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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 55
Points: 168
Location: South Jordan, UT
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A month or so ago someone (Stephen Carter? Mark Brown) began the discussion about writing our shame. I found the discussion fascinating. Mark asked me how I felt about writing my shame, and I've been pondering my answer ever since.
Certainly the things in my life that have brought me the most shame have also been for me the times when I have done the most soul-searching and the most growing. I guess they are the times when I have lived the deepest. Any way that I can put those deep feelings in my art will make it stronger.
But as for describing it in particular, I'm not so sure.
First, of course, there is my cowardice. I'm afraid of going public. I'm afraid of hurting the feelings of others who might have been involved and who might recognize themselves. I've never been a very private person, which makes it all the more important to me to respect other people's senses of privacy (because I can't understand them and don't know where the line is).
And also, there's this: I have repented. I'm not sure I want to stick a pin in the wound and poke around. I'm not sure that would be charitable to one of God's children (myself). I certainly wouldn't want to do it to anyone else. Would He bless me and my art if I decided to swallow the pain of that for the good of my art? Or does He expect me to move along and not linger in that place?
Certainly I believe that the lessons I've learned from my mistakes are mine, eternally mine. Probably it wouldn't be wrong to relive that pain in order to create something that will be cathartic to others and might teach them those lessons vicariously.
What do you think?
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Rank: Visitor
Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 5
Points: 15
Location: Gresham, OR
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Darlene,
I'm someone who has laid it all out there, on the internet, for everyone to see. I survived the experience. It certainly separates the tolerant from the intolerant, the jerks from the saints, and the a few other polar categories.
Those it has alienated have not been missed. Those who stick with me have not been sorry.
arkred">Rex Goode, BSW
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 12
Points: 42
Location: Provo, UT
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I do worry that writing about our shame is a bit like the dog returning to its vomit. But literature works best when it's about real humanity, and writing about our shame gets to the heart of that about as fast as anything I can think of.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 6
Points: 18
Location: Falls Church, VA
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Darlene, why not just pretend you’re a fictional character? It doesn’t seem to me that any of these questions would be issues so much if one were writing fiction, even if the characters were based on his or her own experiences. I think we ought to approach personal narratives with the same level of self-detachment.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/27/2007
Posts: 21
Points: 75
Location: Santaquin, Utah
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I'll have to go back and read Stephen's/Mark's post.
When you say writing our shame, are you talking about individual shame or institutional shame--they're very different sorts of story.
I ask because I see a fair number of would-be exposes that want to reveal the shame of institutional Mormonism (yet another polygamy, Mountain Meadows Massacre, or Joseph Smith as charlatan screed). Such stories frankly bore me and generally offer little in the way of new or interesting insight into the minds of Mormons, general Mormon thought, or social exploration.
If you're speaking of personal shame, it isn't the shame--or at least not only the shame--that makes the story interesting, is it? It's the reaction, the exploration, the attempt to find value, power or meaning in the experience.
You-all seem to have a clear sense of what that means; I'm in the dark on this one and would like to understand the question a little better.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 24
Points: 72
Location: Detroit, MI
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Here is my original post thanks to our own William Morris:
As part of today's Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor sent out a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Today is the old boy's birthday. He would have been 111 years old.)
"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."
I thought it was interesting and relevant to our ongoing discussions of what makes good literature/art/writing/etc. Culturally, we are encouraged to forget our mistakes and those of others. The repentance process encourages us to view our sins (things we are ashamed of) as hateful things to be gotten past and overcome. We are also encouraged to forgive and forget the sins of others who trespass against us.
With that in mind, isn't that part of what drives writers and other artists to create so much toothless, harmless, often quality-challenged "faith affirming" work? Because they are trying to avoid "shameful" things?
Anyway, I wonder what would happen if a writer or, more interestingly, a group of writers made it their project to write a story (or a series of stories) about the things they're ashamed of in their lives. Not memoir or autobiography, though it could be those, but fiction or poetry that is somehow based around something legitimately shameful. And the point wouldn't be therapy but instead it would be to create really good, compelling stories that would capture readers because they are human and true and well written.
Just a thought.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 5
Points: 57
Location: Provo, UT
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I think fictionalizing yourself first is a good idea, because let's do honest: our own memories are semi-fictional reconstructions of events anyway. I can still remember how shocked I was the first time I realized that since I can see myself in many of my memories, they are reconstructions of what happened, rather than raw recorded data.
If you fictionalize yourself, it's also easier to worry about considerations of good storytelling rather than being stuck to the details of actual reality.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 33
Points: 2
Location: St. George, UT
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I see what you're saying, but I have to agree about the dog-returning-to-his-vomit idea. I do find that things I wouldn't bring up at a dinner party are often very fruitful writing subjects, but I don't think we have to get caught up in shame or shameful things to have depth in our writing. Maybe I just don't care for the word "shameful."
I also find it helpful to get to the core of what the event/issue from my life is and then extrapolating from there. The specific biographical details aren't the source of the power of mining your own history. The emotions are the powerful thing! My play _Squish_ is about three sisters and a pet bug but it's really about how I felt when someone important to me (not my sister) betrayed my trust (not by killing my bug). My most successful plays have been plays that draw on deep emotions and plays that have helped me to work through hard times in my life.
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Rank: AML Member
Joined: 10/25/2007
Posts: 62
Points: 186
Location: Utah
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I think that the core of the matter is not neccessarily re-creating "shame" in our writing, but about becoming vulnerable in our writing (which, from time to time, may include our shame). To write what is hard to write, to become exposed and vulnerable and metaphorically naked, that is when the most power comes into our writing. To become achingly honest. That is much more difficult than digging up past sins-- instead it is digging up our souls, uncovering them.
Upon the stage of a theater can be represented in character, evil and its consequences, good and its happy results and rewards; the weakness and the follies of man, the magnamity of virtue and the greatness of truth. The stage can be made to aid the pulpit in impressing upon the minds of a community an enlightened sense of a virtuous life, also a proper horror of the enormity of sin and a just dread of its consequences. The path of sin with its thorns and pitfalls, its gins and snares can be revealed, and how to sun it (Discourses of Brigham Young, p.243; Bookcraft, 199 
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