How personal is too personal?

Since one of the things I'm writing these days is that thing called the "personal" essay, I'm finding that there is a place where I suddenly wonder about what is right and good to share and what is maybe too much. I'm not so concerned about myself. I've sometimes wondered if I have "boundary issues," as I am generally pretty forthcoming about my life, sharing things sometimes that others might consider too personal, too close to the heart, to share. Not with everyone--I do have very specific boundaries with specific individuals--but I often find myself writing something for Facebook and then thinking, "No one wants to know this. It's really more than I 'should' share."

But there's also the received wisdom that the most personal is also the most universal. But that's a dicey proposition as well--as testified by a lot of the "poetry" written by my students (when I had students). Sometimes the most personal is squirmingly uncomfortable for the reader--or feels ungodly trite. But my specific, personal, individual story of great grief, for instance, or a moment of feeling blessed: that can indeed approach the universal.

It's a strange thing about writing personally. We essentially do it for two reasons. One is to work our way through whatever we are feeling or thinking, while it is happening, making sense by turning whatever is going on into a narrative, which helps us manage it with a modicum more grace. We don't generally share that stuff hot off the griddle, as it were. Before it sees an audience, it is carefully combed through and recrafted to more precisely capture the experience--and, I think, to more directly universalize the experience, to help readers to feel vicariously whatever it is we went through. But then there is the writing that is done in retrospect, after all the personal processing is complete. The end result is very much the same: a more clear, calm, and deliberately structured attempt to convey an experience.

As I write this, I realize that part of what I've been wavering about is that the thing I want to turn into an essay is still a little too fresh and raw for me personally. If I can't get the requisite objective distance in my own head and heart, I can hardly produce something that feels appropriate to share with an audience. I'm suddenly thinking about some inspirational talks I've heard, in which the speaker is relating something deeply personal and often extremely painful--being raped repeatedly by a trusted figure in the past--but is able to do so completely calmly. It isn't that the feeling isn't there; if the speaker didn't have all the feeling behind the words, audiences would not be as captivated, I think. But the feeling vibrates behind the presentation, which is ... well, not matter-of-fact but clear and objective.

I hasten to say that what I'm writing about is nowhere near that personal nor that painful. I'm trying to verbalize something I value and to explain why I value it. That requires a fair amount of self-examination, of course--which is why I love writing personal essays. They give me an opportunity to find clarity in myself, as I try to put the clarity into the words I write.

Again, the process is not entirely dissimilar from academic writing, in that I must continually ask the questions that might arise to counter whatever it is I'm saying. I actually do imagine being asked, "Do you mean X? Is Y really the case, always? What about Q and T?" And my work to answer those questions, not to dodge them, helps me clarify what I think, how I feel.

Shifting gears: the freelance job I was expecting to arrive yesterday is, once again, late--god knows when I'll actually get it, and I'm starting to wonder if I'll actually get it. Instead, I have a second round to do on a smaller job that I got last week. So my personal writing may be, again, put on hold for a while, which means blog posts may be put on hold as well. But when I'm back writing, I'll be back blogging.