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Should Writers Come With a Warning Label?
In the age of blogging, it seems like everything is fair game for the content factory.
Most of my friends have become accustomed to the fact that they’ll read about themselves in my blog.
My daughters, my ex’s, my siblings and parents too. My partners, certainly, and I think I’ve written enough articles inspired by comments left on other articles that it’s clear that I use that for content.
One of my recent articles, about the metaphors we use in our work, was a direct result of a talk that my girlfriend and I watched together. When she read the piece, I got an ironic text: Got some inspo from the presentation, eh? with a laughing face next to it.
Mining my life for content is not always a good idea.
I’m somewhat uncomfortable with my own experiences being the source of my articles — even though I write an awful lot of memoir-type stories, some intensely personal. Hell, if you go back far enough, I used to write about explicit sexual experiences (that’s a warning, family members, not to dig too deep into my past stories).
I’ve never had anyone come up to me after they’ve been mentioned in an article and complain — likely because I tend to do a pretty good…
