“Is there a bifurcation of self?- is there, can there be, a self that exists outside of the writing? Can you really put yourself, your truth, into something and then say it isn’t you? And why do we ask that of them?”Yes. Because the present me is horribly different from the past me (which is why I’m glad I torched my old blogs and retain the barest scraps of old journals), the future me will be horribly different from the present me (and I already resent him and he will resent me for all the things I do wrong now, some of which I should know are wrong and some of which I shouldn’t, and which is worse deserves its own essay), and one of the ways that future me will preserve my superiority over (or at least difference from) present me is to renounce my connection with my present writing. Like, by tomorrow I’ll regret intentionally obfuscating my tenses.
Well I am clearly having a crisis of pronoun, so we’re even.
You know, and burn me at the stake and call me Joan of the antifeminist narrative arc for saying this, but, I talk to so many men about a similar horror. That cringe factor you get when calling to mind a self-righteous teenage self or a college self who found the clitoris and thought they knew all there was to know— it seems men, or it seems a masculine characteristic, a proclivity I suppose (at least in the men I speak to, and believe me, I’m aware that that is a special set/sect), to want to die when they think of the mistakes they have made or the fools they have been, but why?
See, I love my old stupid self! I feel freedom in the ability to objectively evaluate it as something that no longer is. I am so much more concerned, hung up on, even, on being terribly wrong TODAY. Or, with even more tragic potential— being just sort of wrong now, just short of good, and well, the road to hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs, as they say!
So I cherish with a great relief that (probably inaccurate and obviously beguiling) opportunity to believe Former Me and Now Me are different, that I am connected to Old Me but only by a string, only by the best parts! Oh yes, here is me in the past, I think, and I am sort of an idiot but still pretty okay! And imagine! You are so much better now! Imagine how good you’d think you are now if you could only step outside of yourself and your issues and really see your present Self with the same forgiveness and affection you grant your former self! The same forgiveness you grant Others!
Imagine if we loved ourselves the way we love each other!
[Yea, I went there].
Shorter answer: no.
Longer answer: if you want your writing to be worth a damn, you have to invest yourself in it. Sure, you can take on a personality, but it may well ruin you. Just look at Neal Pollack.
Write from yourself and don’t be afraid to say, “This is me.” Particularly in nonfiction. Yes, you will change over the years and things once important will seem frivolous and dumb. But at the time, that was you, and if you really cared, some of that passion and fire will still show through.
