Honesty is a tricky subject for people. We are taught it from the cradle. Yet, at times we are not honest at all. We all tell little white lies to others like “Oh yes what a great dress” or “Sure, I will consider your ideas.” This is often just to smooth the social considerations or avoid making a commitment call now.
This is the kind of vacillating behavior that salespeople are taught to head off at the pass so they can nail down a sale. You see it every time the sales pro says something like, “Now I know what you are thinking…”. The point is not whether he gets it right or not. When he acknowledged that you are thinking is enough to stop you in your “No” tracks. Using white lies a pervasive kind of thinking that is common throughout society for better or ill.
Most of the time when we doge on honesty it is all about our own inner fears. We kid ourselves that we don’t want to hurt the other people’s feelings, but in reality we don’t want to feel bad for saying “No I cannot do that.”
In many cases it serves us well, to some degree. The greatest trouble I have found with this kind of thinking is that we use it on ourselves far more often and with far greater subtlety than we do with others. We are experts at avoiding self honesty.
Honesty in Getting Down to Work
How many times have you avoided sitting down to write something because something else was “more important”? Did you miss publishing deadlines because you were “sure no one wants to read my stuff”. Were your books not completed because you “found something interesting over here to write on just because you were stuck…or worse something to do other than writing at all?”
Using these convient white lies we effectively skip out on our work. If we choose to be honest with ourselves, we can see the problem. What we need to change to make the writing a priority in our lives is right there, just for the moments we accept the lie because likely there is a need for some work or worse we need to grow some where.
Honesty Changes
When you have you enjoyed someone knock your work? Did you take their evaluation and given it time to wander about in your brain before calling them, mentally I hope, an ignorant slob? Are you avoiding taking that course on better blogging techniques just because it will cost $100 or because you can avoid putting up a blog if you don’t know how to do it?
Does any of that sound familiar?
Honesty is said to be the best policy, but it’s also the hardest thing for a writer to do to himself. Being the dream writer floats before our eyes. We want to write like Hemingway or Asimov. We want to be brilliant like Peggy Noonan or Will Rodgers. So many writers we want to be like the greats but none of them are us.
Writing another wrtier’s way is not being true to your voice. Yes, using a given style is useful to learn, but when the learning is done it comes down to just you. The interesting bit here is your voice, the one in your head, knows this. When we try to write with another voice, our voice just politely shuts up. Then we wonder why we failed. We failed because we did not listen to ourselves, our voice. At our higher level we know this. It’s our ego that just cannot be honest about it.
Denaial is our recourse, so we try to write like someone else because we are not them. It’s a form of escapism. The honest writer knows he is who he is and writes his way. When honest self discovery shows improvement is needed the honest writer signs up for a class, gets a book or asks for help. If the same honsety finds that we are stalling by too much practice or research, it is time to shift gears and get that work finnished and published. It is not easy to be honest with yourself.
So what do we do? How do we get honest with ourselves?
Honesty Starts at Listen
The first step is to start listening to our own voice. Write like we talk to another person. Talk on paper to a friend, someone we know. We can talk to ourselves even, younger or older, you choose. The key though is to talk to a specific person you know. It does not matter if that person is living and breathing or if they are an avatar you have imagined. There are no points for how we build the conversation, only that we hold it.
What is the commitment
After we become honest about our own writing voice, we can move on to ask ourselves about other things, like just how much work we will be needed for a project. What do we need to learn for running a writing business? How committed are we to getting something done? The list is long and the first step is being honest with yourself. Then we can be honest with our audience, the work, our editors, critics, etc…
The thing to remember is our honesty starts with ourselves. Build that and the rest starts to fall in place. So where do we go from here?
Honesty is to Know yourself
To be honest with yourself I think takes place over several areas inside yourself and your writing. The start is knowing yourself.
I have been a long accustomed to practices in meditation, reflection and journaling. Regualar reflection has givne me a better understanding of myself and taught me to take criticism better because of it. Recieveing criticism is still not fun, but I am more empathetic to the critic now than in the past. You could say that I am a big fan of these kinds of practices for writers. Many of the old writers like Thoreau were big into it. The biggest reason writers to use such reflective practices has always been that reflection requires self honesty.
Self honesty makes you a better writer.
From my standpoint, a writer’s job is to use their inner self-evaluation and understanding to understand the characters he is creating and the audience he is talking to.
Morning Pages
I took up writing free thought writing ev I am also a big fan of Chet Scott’s Becoming Built to Lead practices. I have fount the mental upkeep from both to have added to my work.
Taking the time to put our thoughts honestly in writing allows us to build the strength to be honest with ourselves like nothing else I have seen. It’s a kind of safe space where you take out the factor of fear of what others might think and just let go. I totally recommend these practices as a way to get to know what is floating about in your mind. The fact is you are never going to be able to write honestly, and your readers will be able to tell, if you are not honest with yourself first.
Honesty is Your Voice
From my experience our voice is basically listening to and repeating that clear voice in your head instead of copying another’s. We deal with other voices in our heads all the time, and outside of writing, reflection or meditation, we frequently ignore it along with all the other voices.
Who are those other voices? For the most part they are the voices of well meaning and loving friends and family that have tried to give us the best advice they found. They are a kind of endless loop of recordings constantly going off in our heads that tend to interfere with us actually having an original idea. This is why so many people have said over the centuries that they did not have an original idea till they were some age or another well past what anyone would consider young.
For a writer it comes down to just one thing. When we are honest with ourselves so that we remain ourselves, we are honest with our writing. Your voice needs to be shining through the word, not your favorite author.
Emotional Honesty
Honestly you are who you are. When we write we are the summation of everything we have seen, heard or experienced. Those things are going to come out. If you want to write better you are going to let them out. That’s why we start with courage when we write. Ours is not a craft for the feint of heart. It takes a warrior’s guts to do this because much of what we will write deals with pain. Our pain.
In dealing with our pain, we have to be honest with ourselves first and before that we have to look at ourselves. Everyone has pain. That pain is going to come out in our writing. Sure we might dim it in some ways to lighten the book’s read. How many kids throughout the years knew that Louis Carroll and Frank Baum’s beloved children’s’ books were about drug trips?
The honesty of both writers’ experiences remained for those experienced enough to see them while the books remained safe enough for more innocent eyes. All in all, it was the honesty that made their books better.
Last Point
This is only a blast off point. My thoughts here are meant for you to start your own effort to get to know yourself and your thoughts. I’ve only covered a couple ideas. There are plenty of other reflective techniques out there. Go reflect on your thoughts a bit. Become a better writer.
After so mush honesty, try to take it slow with Going Slow Makes Mastery
Photo by Larry Nalzaro on Unsplash
