An Open Book?

I have been reading over my posts and noticing that I am sharing a lot more personal information than I thought I would when I started this. At the same time, there are things that I begin to write about but then hold back because I worry how it will be taken. Will someone in my family or a friend be offended by what I write? Will they think it is about them when it really isn't, but could be? Will they attribute feelings and intentions to what I say that I do not for a moment intend? Will what I write someday be more widely read and  somehow held against me?

Most of the truly personal stuff has been my own. I tend to edit out what I think my family would want left unsaid. I have left a few skeletons in the family closet to their dark and dusty realms and don't shed light on them. I may open that door someday, after those who could be negatively impacted have gone. I can't say for sure but for now I am cautious.

We all have those places on our life maps that we shy away from; the emotional badlands. Yet many writers (maybe most?) use them to fuel their imaginations and build stories. Steven King realized that his drug and alcohol addictions influenced some of his most popular novels. In "On Writing" he likens the psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes to the booze and coke that were causing him "Misery" in his life and holding him as a tortured captive. But, when he wrote about it, he cloaked it all in fiction. It wasn't until he published "On Writing" in 2000-2001 that he cracked open the door and let us all in on his secrets. For the king of horror, that had to be pretty terrifying; wondering how letting those truths be known would affect a career such as his. Others hid nothing or at least it seems that way. "Write from your heart" and "write what you know" are two of the most common pieces of advice I have seen in all the books and sites I have read.

I'm not writing fiction so I have to choose. Share things that may or may not be flattering or keep silent. People who know me, know that silence is not usually one of my greater virtues. As long as I am the only one that those questions in the first paragraph pertain to and no one else's privacy is concerned I guess my new motto should be the old tried and true, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Thank you Admiral Farragut for your sage advice.