by Leo Wiles
20 August 2014
Hi guys. I’ve just landed an online warts’n’all blogging gig on quite a well-known site which at first I was thrilled at. Now, I’m starting to wonder if I have thrown myself into a lion’s den as I’m expected to be super personal and while my partner is okay about it, he has put his foot down about me writing about certain things to do with our life. Would love your thoughts on how you know / establish where the boundary line is as a columnist. Anon
My sex life as a teenager (or rather, lack of) and the funny observations I made as a child were often casually dished up to busy commuters in newspaper columns by my talented journo parents. The impact of the teen article far outweighed anything that had gone before. Perhaps because my peers were able to read and the subject matter was titillating to them. All I can say is that I am grateful that it ran in a pre-social media era, giving it a limited geographical area (and shelf-life).
Twenty years on, the way information is distributed has drastically changed – and so has the scope of consequences. Which is why I would urge caution when mining your own life and urge you to avoid using that of those closest to you. Because as we know, even when interviewees have given you permission it is hard to see the real impact of their disclosures, now and in the distant future. Like most of you, however, I entered journalism to communicate with others. To be inspirational and highlight social morays, behaviours, our outrage of circumstance, laws and happenstance we can be compelled to write about them.
Topics such as health, wealth and lifestyle are all better written with a bit of life experience under your belt as your questions can be more interesting and article better fleshed out – even if you’re interviewing experts. It’s the same with the gut churning events of your life, which we can become even more passionate about expressing (however, the pitfalls are far greater too emotionally and legally just for starters).
That’s why it’s so important to know and defend your no go areas. For example, I signed a gag order not to write about workplace bullying and while I feel safe writing about the $126K price-tag of a sexually transmitted debt my ex left me with, there are areas such as domestic violence, [which I have written about in the past pre-experiencing it], where I know I will have difficulty in being impartial. I also fear the transference would cripple me for months and impact on my children.
Actually, my offspring are my litmus test. Before accepting something or pitching something potentially personal, I ask myself what the risk factors are of it affecting them or opening us up to speculation by their peers. Which is where a nom de plume AKA a pseudonym can come into their own – especially when you feel compelled to write in first person – not to protect the guilty but the innocents in your life.
So your question about establishing boundaries really starts with you – and your partner, if aspects of his life too are set to be mined for your column. I suggest you sit down and both hash out what you’re comfortable revealing, and the topics that leave you with an icky, can-we-stand-this-being-online-forever feeling. You’ll know what those no-go topics are. Also, hopefully you have some autonomy to steer your column to a degree and that can be both fun and liberating for a writer. Just don’t feel bullied by an editor to put stuff out there that you’d rather stayed in the vault.
What’s your take on using your life as fodder for writing? Would you, should you, could you? We’d love to hear…
