Don’t be the flasher: avoiding public exposure
I’m running into a common artist question: why did I make this? Not everything is meant to be shared. Some things aren’t ready while others are so personal — it feels like purely self-indulgence. Where do I draw the line between sharing my journey or exposing my private road? This month, I hit a snag.
I’m on a writing schedule with a piece due this week (deadline danger!). My system is to draft the piece from a list using the idea with which I have the most emotional connection. Sometimes that most emotional connection is because the thing hasn’t been processed yet — this is one of those. A story is crashing into my deadline that’s so fresh it’s not yet mine to tell. This is confusing because — yes, this thing happened to me, but no — I’m not yet living it. It’s impact still on the edges of my reality. Imagine I’m in the pizza shop that was robbed but I’m not the employee at the register.
Using a traumatic experience to hit my deadline feels gross but — haven’t I been doing this my entire career?
