Writing Lessons: Writing Your Truth

WRITING YOUR TRUTH is one of those phrases that makes for good conversation, a fine search term on Google, and a much-overused topic for workshops. And that’s about where the fun begins and ends since actually writing your truth is as hard as writing gets. Here to take on that gnarly topic is Steven Whitacre, author of the beautifully-written — and remarkably-titled — memoir, My Father’s Prostitute: Story of a Stolen Childhood. Let’s see what he has to say.

BARING YOUR SOUL WHILE WRITING MEMOIR

by Steven Whitacre

So you’ve decided that you want to write a memoir that deals with a particularly tough emotional subject. Maybe it’s an experience you had that profoundly changed your life, or an epiphany that came to you during a difficult time. You want to share this with the world, in the hopes that it may help others in a similar situation. As human beings we tend to want to present our best face to the world. We want people to see us as strong individuals that have it together. We want others to look at us and see a hero. We want to write a deeply moving book that affects others without showing our own weaknesses, without others seeing anything other than the hero inside of us.

I have bad news for you. You can’t.

If you want to write a truly moving memoir, you are going to have to be ready to bare your soul. To expose parts of your life that you wish you could ignore or forget about. If you want your story to do good, you have to allow others to see your true vulnerabilities. Not just the ones you want to show them, but all of them. You have to set aside your pride and bare it all. Readers know. They know if you’re being truly honest and open. They may not always be able to tell if you are hiding something specific, but they can often times tell if something is missing from the story. They need to see you at your worst, at your most embarrassing, with all of your weaknesses exposed. Why? Because then, and only then, can they see the growth and change that you are writing about. They have many of those same weaknesses and they know it. If they can’t connect with you on that level, they won’t connect with you at all.

When I wrote My Father’s Prostitute: Story of a Stolen Childhood I wanted to accomplish two things. The first was that I wanted others to see that it IS possible to heal after suffering childhood sexual abuse. The other was I wanted those who hadn’t suffered such abuse, to understand what it was like to be inside the head of somebody who had. I wanted to give them the “inside scoop” so to speak. I couldn’t do that without being completely and totally honest about everything. It wasn’t comfortable at times, and there were definitely some things that I’d rather have let remain in the past, but I knew that I wasn’t going to help anybody if I tried to save face. There is a saying that “you can’t save your face and your butt at the same time”, and that is nowhere more true than when writing a memoir if your intent is to help others.

When I sat down to write, I just laid it all out there. I wrote what came out as it came out. I didn’t worry about what people would think, I didn’t worry about how it might sound, I didn’t worry about structure or syntax or tense. I just wrote. I wrote from the heart and let it just flow through me onto the page. I didn’t think “oh I should say this” or “I don’t think I want to talk about that”. I just wrote. That’s the only way to do it. Just write. Write about your feelings, write about your thoughts. Write about your pain and your triumphs. Write about whatever comes out. You can edit it later (you ARE hiring a professional editor, aren’t you?). You can move things around later. You can make all sorts of changes later, but when you sit down to write, just do it.

Nobody wants to appear weak. Nobody wants to be thought of that way. But there is power in your weakness. Power in your vulnerability. If you want your story to be powerful, then you have to set aside your hesitation and just be open.

My Father’s Prostitute: Story of a Stolen Childhood, an excerpt

I had just spent all those years hating people who had it better than me. Not that it was their fault, but I was always jealous of my friends who had it good and seemed happy. And now, here I was, surrounded by grown-up versions of them. I wanted to fit in and be one of them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Eventually, this ongoing battle in my head became too much. I didn’t know how to really be anybody. All I knew was that I still felt empty inside, and no matter how much I surrounded myself with people I wanted to be like, no matter how much I tried to have a good relationship with my wife, no matter how much I tried to become a “grown up”, I could never fill that emptiness. I could be surrounded by a dozen people and still be lonely inside. Sure, I was able to fake it. It wasn’t as though I sat in a corner by myself and ignored everybody, but I was pretty dead inside.

But I did learn one thing through all of this. I learned how people wanted me to act. I became really good at hiding my true self and only showing people what I knew they wanted to see. So, naturally, people liked me. And when they liked me, I could get them to do things for me. Over the years, I became a master manipulator. I learned how to read people and used that to my advantage to allow me to continue on doing my drugs and getting the things I needed, such as money for more drugs. Since I really didn’t care about them, I had no problem using them. I was out for myself and didn’t care what damage lay in my wake.

But I wasn’t the horrible person that I had become, either. I didn’t want to be somebody who didn’t care. I didn’t want to hurt people. But I didn’t know any other way. It was all about survival, and this is how my brain had been trained to behave. Deep down, I wanted to be liked for me. That little boy inside me still just wanted to find somebody to love him and keep him safe, but that little boy wasn’t allowed out. The world was mean and horrible, and people couldn’t be trusted. Those that did care were undoubtedly going to hurt him and I couldn’t allow that so I locked him in the basement of my soul, built a wall around him, and shut out the light. From time to time, I would hear him crying out, but I was able to ignore him and he would go away. The world was no place for him. He had emotions, he felt things, he was weak.

Author’s bio:

Steven Whitacre is the author of the best selling memoir, My Father’s Prostitute: Story of a Stolen Childhood, as well as a contributing author for the book Google Hacking for Penetration Testers (Syngress Publishing, 2004). He is currently working on his next book An Accidental Punk, to be released in 2015. Although new to the publishing world, Steven is no stranger to the spotlight, having appeared on stage, television, and live radio. Currently, Steven lives with his family – which includes 2 dogs and 3 cats – in the Pacific Northwest.

His memoir, My Father’s Prostitute: Story of a Stolen Childhood can be found on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/My-Fathers-Prostitute-Stolen-Childhood/dp/1304774007/