I’m having a bit of a crisis of conscience. Maybe if I write about it I can sort it out. Maybe you can help me sort it out. All I know is that it keeps nagging at me, which means I have to deal with it.
I have something I very much want to write about. It would not be a simple thing to do, just by the nature of the topic and time constraints. I feel like I could do a good job with it, and that it would be a unique piece and perhaps of some critical worth to read. To make the writing as good as it can be, I have to be honest. And if I am honest, some of the content might offend, hurt, or anger some people who read it, some my friends, people who have been kind to me. And therein lies my crisis.
Normally, I don’t worry too much about troubling others with my blog spew – it’s ain’t the New York Times, after all. I have opinions, so do you and you and you, and we are all entitled to have them. It’s good to have an opinion, good to take a stance, good to be passionate about things. (And really, I would be honored to trouble Phil Spector or Jan Brewer or Dina Lohan.) But this is more complicated. What I want to write about has endless shades of grey, as well as blackest black and purest white. I have a personal connection to the material, and perspective from both close up and far, far back. And when I have this sort of fire to write about something, it usually turns out to be a good thing, and at the very least, settles something in my mind. It is absolutely not my intent or interest to upset anyone with this particular piece.
Nothing I write will change anything – that isn’t the point. So what is the point? Is it worth doing?
“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
I have lots of nice things to say, and I would say them. But nothing that is truly intriguing is just sweetness and light, or at least not to me. I like the complications and the strangeness, the dark and the light, the successes and failures. It makes for a story that is compelling and real. And I haven’t seen that yet, and I want to try to tell it as best I can, in some small way.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman