Confessional Writers: Should we be Asking Permission or Forgiveness?

On handling the fallout of oversharing.

Whether Confessional Writing is a worthy pursuit or not is a topic of much debate. The main criticism is that it is self-indulgent, in its nature suggesting that those who practice it find no subject more compelling than themselves.

Even if we embrace the movement, its monetization may cause us problems. In her 2015 article ‘The First-Person Industrial Complex’, Slate Features Director Laura Bennet raises concerns about the exploitation of Confessional Writers in a click-driven world. When shock factor sells, she quotes Jezebel Editor Jia Tolentino, it sends a message to writers that ‘the best thing they have to offer is the worst thing that ever happened to them’. Not only does this encourage oversharing, but short-sightedness. In the same article, Bennet cites Salon Editor Sarah Hepola’s worry, ‘I try to warn them that their internet trail will be ‘I was a BDSM person’ and they did it for $150’.

"When shock factor sells, it sends a message to writers that 'the best thing they have to offer is the worst thing that ever happened to them'."

It is selfish. It will alienate people. We hear these criticisms – of the principle of Confessional Writing – all the time. But what about the approach to it?

If you read my ‘Journal Extracts: November 2024’ post, you will know of two encounters that I had last month, one with a critic of my books and the other with a friend in need.

The first took place at Limassol Book Fair. I had lugged boxes of my books to the venue and was setting up for a weekend of smiling at strangers, trying to convince them – despite every anxious instinct – that my work was worth reading, when a friend of my grandparents appeared. She looked at the stacks of my two published books and proceeded to give me her ‘comments’. The most damning of these was that my first book, Love and Only Water, contained too much about my family.

Outwardly, I took this well. But of course I felt rocked, reminded of the awful post-publication week in which my relatives had read the book, and we’d had to have frank and tearful discussions about what I had meant by it and how we were going to move forward. I hadn’t intended to expose anyone. Their stories were just so inspiring. I probably should have asked before sharing parts of them as publicly as I did, but I wasn’t sure of the response I would get and opted to plead forgiveness later.

"How do we decide which stories are 'confessional' and which are just true?"

Much of my second book, Thirty-Eight Days of Rain, also draws on real life. Interestingly, though, the people who had wanted to know all about my family’s reaction to its predecessor asked few questions about the sexual assault or mental health issues that this story described. It seems there is one brand of honesty that people will hear, whether to clap their hands or point fingers at it, and another, more vulnerable kind that they are too flustered even to take issue with.

How do we decide which stories are ‘confessional’ and which are just true? If I published an account of my trip to the supermarket this week, no matter how accurate, I doubt anyone would call it revelatory. So long as I bore only my own soul in its contents, a more daring piece might be uncomfortable for certain acquaintances of mine, but they wouldn’t think it immoral unless it appeared to implicate someone else. I am not sure, though, that an exchange between two people can ever belong more to one of them than the other. Even if I am talking about something that has happened to me, doesn’t the impact that that has on you, ultimately, take on its own significance?

"I am not sure that an exchange between two people can ever belong more to one of them than the other."

On that note, a lighter example. As mentioned earlier, also in my ‘Journal Extracts: November 2024’ post was an exchange I’d had with a friend. Here’s where this gets a bit meta. That friend is on this mailing list. He is reading the same words you’re reading, possibly at this same moment, and will likely text me when he is done to tell me if and how I made him think today. That was what he did last month, in response to what I had written about him. No one else would have recognized the exchange, in which he’d expressed feeling bad for leaning on me too often, emotionally. I published the post. He sent me a voice note, then a text. What it said made my heart drop–

Hold on. Am I making the mistake over again, here? Let me try something different.

‘Hey, can I ask you something?’

‘Shoot’.

‘Would you mind if I wrote about you in my article this week? I don’t want a repeat of last time’s mistake . . .’

‘Would you believe me when I say that I still don’t know what the mistake was? I am so confused by that story . . . Of course’.

Permission acquired. So, here is the text he sent after reading my journal extracts:

‘What you wrote this morning made me think so much, it made me doubt a lot’.

Queue that heart drop. Too anxious to listen to my friend’s voice note, I came up with an excuse why I couldn’t just yet but said that I thought I knew what he was going to say.

‘Please never doubt, I love that we talk as we do . . . that you make me question these things . . . I am deeply, deeply sorry . . . meant it as a positive’, I said, and much more of this sort.

His reply: ‘Woooooow, ok . . . That’s not the part I wanted to talk about’. Laughing emojis.

Apparently, another part of my post had made him question ‘the figure of the artist’. Baffled, I went back and played his voice note, and found that all it contained was a request for my husband and I to bring lemonade over to his house that evening. Our friend didn’t have any soft drinks in.

"What matters more, protecting a story as you want to share it, or protecting the feelings of those who might take issue with that?"

This was, without a doubt, the greatest facepalm moment of my life. What’s the moral of the story? Probably that Confessional Writing is indeed exploitative, short-sighted and – if the self-referential nature of this article is anything to go by – undeniably self-indulgent. It is also cathartic and fun, and can start interesting conversations. As for whether we should be asking permission or forgiveness – what matters more, protecting a story as you want to share it, or protecting the feelings of those who might take issue with that? I think it varies from case to case.

But as my friend said, in my moment of panicking that I’d upset him, ‘Yeah ok, but what a fucking friend I would have been. Probably better to lose me in that scenario!’