Thursday, November 12, 2009

Unbloggability

Sometimes it's because someone else will be hurt, sometimes it's because someone else will be humiliated, sometimes it's because someone else will be enraged, sometimes it's because you'll permanently alienate at least three people important to you, sometimes it's because you don't trust your own motives, sometimes it's because you'll get done like a dinner for defamation and sometimes it's because it's against all the rules of civilised life to tell what you know.

But oh dearie me, I don't think it's ever been all of those at once before. No wonder I can't concentrate.

11 comments:

Mindy said...

There is always 'fiction'. Put it all in a book. Please! I'm bursting with curiosity to hear about people I don't know and will probably never meet.

Anonymous said...

Yes, similar quandaries musthave motivated any number of novels.

This old world is a new world said...

Yes, I'm with Mindy. Isn't this what allegory is for?

Zoe said...

Reasons, huhn?

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

As in 'Because of reasons'? Yes, exactamundo.

The Paradoxical Cat said...

You have to make sure the setting of the novel is not too thinly disguised though or all the bad effects will happen anyway. And also the things that happen in real life are often just too bizarre to be credible in fiction.

Elisabeth said...

You have my sympathy. Autobiographers lead perilous lives, as Paul John Eakins writes. I should know, I've fallen foul of late.

Not everyone can turn everything into fiction or allegory, sometimes we feel compelled to tell our version of the truth, 'tell the truth and shame the devil', as one of my literary supervisors says, but of course there are consequences, even in blogland.

ThirdCat said...

you can make private sekret blogs that nobody knows about with passwords and everything. Just sayin'.

Also, have been giving my paper journals a bit of a run lately.

They are different - sekret blogs and paper journals - and do make you think and write in different ways.

Deborah said...

you can make private sekret blogs

I've been tempted...

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

I've seen the private sekret blog work for at least one other person quite well. But somehow I think this particular episode might be best left unwritten, even for my own eyes only. It's one of those awful things, many years in the making, where public life and very very private life overlap, and one is forced to confront one's entire history regarding those two Freudian cornerstones of life, love and work. At my age this is a bit of an endurance test.

And all this over something that happened to somebody else. Actually it's been a bit of an internal crisis, like a pink tissue in the washing machine.

Tatyana Larina said...

'It's one of those awful things, many years in the making, where public life and very very private life overlap, and one is forced to confront one's entire history regarding those two Freudian cornerstones of life, love and work. [...] And all this over something that happened to somebody else.'

Not even for the archives? That is a pity, because it sounds too important to leave unwritten. The pink tissue in the washing situation is easily rectified with a bit of bleach. Internal crisis is more difficult, but a great creative generator, or isn't that the usual cliche? A tissue in the washing will sometimes brighten dull garments in unexpected ways. Integrated with the teenage vampire story, perhaps?

I'm just saying this, not because I'm nosy (OK, I am a bit nosy), but also because literary landscape would be so barren and dull without those wonderful letters, diaries and personal records of Australian women writers of the past ...