Don't let anyone tell you you shouldn't write—even yourself
The writing advice I gave NYU students
This is my newsletter about my life, interests, and work, including my books, writing, and classes. To show your support consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For $5/month or $50/year, paid subscribers get access to my full archives. I hope you’ll also check out my Substack personal essay publication Open Secrets, which publishes an original essay every week.
Recently, I spoke to NYU journalism students on the ethics of writing essays, as part of a panel arranged by their professor. Exactly what we said I won’t repeat, but I will share that it was a deeply inspiring discussion for me, with some agreement and some disagreement among myself and my fellow essay panelists about exactly how to approach certain situations.
Ultimately, there’s so much about essay writing (and writing in general) that’s subjective. The “correct” answer will depend on a writer’s goals and desires, their comfort level in sharing parts of their lives, whether they plan to use their real name or a pseudonym, how the people in their life feel about being included in their essays, and many other factors.
A student asked a question about whether they would be hurting their future job prospects by writing about an aspect of their personal life. In this case, it was related to their health, but I think how I responded applies beyond the specifics of that situation. The fact of the matter is, someone might not hire you for a job for any number of reasons; it could be because you’ve written not about your own life, but been a journalist covering beats they found too racy.
I don’t think we should be so overly cautious about our writing that we talk ourselves out of writing about subjects that are important to us. That’s not to say you should always write about every thought that pops into your head. We were asked if we regret any of our personal essay writing, and while I don’t exactly regret anything, there are probably pieces I could have been more judicious with. I don’t there’s anything too embarrassing to write about in general, but where that line of what’s “too embarrassing” falls will depend on each individual.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.