About two months ago, Anne Lamott tweeted a line of advice for writers that has stayed on my mind ever since.  She said “Write as if your parents are dead.”

I’ve thought for a while about what that statement implied there. She is saying to write as if your parents will never read what you put out there.  Don’t sanitize your words.  Don’t let external etiquettes dictate what you say and how you say things. Blind yourself to guilt and shame, and dispense with the pleasantries and the apropos.  If you need to delve into some dark and dangerous topic, go there.  If you need to lance an inner abscess or burn down a sacred shrine to tell the truth, you can- and should.  Don’t hide from the hard stuff.

Using your words to go where you need to go and to say what you need to say is part of your craft and your duty as a writer.  It’s when we allow ourselves to go into the forbidden zones of our lives and to explore the off-limits and unapproached moments in our lives that we discover new things about who we really are, and also new insights about the people and the culture around us that shaped us, and that continue to shape us today.

Write for real.

To write this way is not easy, even if it is just for your own reflections.  To write this way, allowing others to read it as well, takes extra courage.  But if you write this way to tell the truth and to find the truth, you will grow.  Such writing is confessional.  It helps us to see the past as it really was, unembellished by our egos and mores and expectations and family lore, or our previous inability to “go there”.  And seeing the past as it really was helps us to understand our present as it really is.

To write this way, you are still responsible for your words and thoughts.  But you are mostly responsible for them to yourself.  And if they are words of truth, they will not bring you shame and guilt, but courage and strength, and growth.  And if you are writing things so that others can read them, chances are, your ruthlessly raw words- although they may possibly punch or prick in the short haul- will carry life in them to others as well.