I’ve been reading a little book called Real Ghosts, written by Daniel Cohen (some trivia for you — born March 12th, the same day as my husband) in the 1970s. It was rescued from a bag of secondhand giveaways from a neighbor this past summer. Yes, yes, real ghosts versus not-real ghosts? The author’s clarification is that “real” pertains to firsthand eyewitnesses and actual events that have a lot of evidence in their favor. “Not real” would be those stories that are purely fictional.
Cohen makes a valid point that witnesses who write down what they believe happened, as immediately as possible, are more likely to remember and relate exact details after their experiences. The biggest problem with waiting a long time — years, as is often the case with researchers digging around for “true” ghost stories to collect and record — is that memories get fuzzy with time, the phantoms distorted, and facts get muddled with false recall. Conflicting, eyewitness statements to the police too long after an event are a good example of that foggy process at work.
A lot of people claim to have had experiences with ghosts. (I admit that I believe I have, too.) Yet a lot of us don’t do much more than tell another person or two about these experiences. We usually don’t write them down right away, if at all. Why not?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of us are worried about not being believed when we say something strange happened to us, or that we saw something implausible or astonishing. Who likes looking and feeling foolish?
And maybe some of us have been hurt by the people we confided in. I know I have. Even just telling someone something that conflicts with his beliefs creates the risk of repulsion. For example, what if angels can be real but ghosts can’t? It might sound silly, but when people believe in something without doubt, the repercussions can be beyond serious. Where does that risk play out with more amplification than in the abrasion of religious and political frictions?
Writers face these risks a lot. Sometimes we choose to speak out, anyway. Other times, we become so bruised by backlashes and unanticipated repugnance that we shy away from writing or talking about what is “real.” Even in fiction, we may find ourselves afraid to develop main characters with indelicate or irrational philosophies if they are not intended to be our villains.
When we speak contrarily to a majority that disagrees or is offended, or even to one person we value in some fashion, we can invite laughter. Disdain. Dismissal. Wrath. But our fear of those responses silences us if we allow it. If we allow it, we let the phantom in to distort our own houses.
There seems to be a lot of that kind of bullying and silencing going on around the Internet in the form of nasty blog and discussion-forum commentaries that are inappropriate to the intention of the original posters. I’ve read a lot more of it than I care to, and even in the last couple of days, I’ve run across a good amount of ugly and useless snark on other websites by ordinary commenters.
Molly McCowan (Inkbot Editing), another copyeditor and copywriter that I’ve run across of late, admitted that she had stopped blogging due to mean and unfair criticisms about her casual writing from people who were obviously intending to cause hurt. I was glad to see that she’s begun to blog again, despite the temptation to go silent.
I’ve often thought about the issue of having to try to remain in tiptop editing shape at all times, even when I’m writing in personal modes. McCowan and others touch upon this in comments to her blog post.
My similar conclusion is that it’s my job to be super-aware when I’m on the job, and when I’m not — writing casual emails, talking face-to-face to friends, family or acquaintances, being human-without-my-editor-hat on — I can make typos, talk slang, mangle-and-mix metaphors to my heart’s pleasure. And yes, even though I like to revise and edit my blog posts so that I’m happy that they say what I want them to, I may still let some errors get by me.
If you want to write me and point them out, that’s fine. But to me, my website’s blog is like the little lounge on the first floor of a hotel. Even if I’m there for a business conference, if I’m off the clock and want to get a glass or two of Rosato at the bar to unwind, I’m entitled to be less than 100% professional.
I’m just getting it out there early in the blogging game, because I don’t intend to worry too much about who doesn’t want me to say something or other, nor whether I transposed a couple of letters or left out a word here and there. I worry about those things when I’m working on the serious material — manuscripts, poems, articles. The rest of this communication stuff is Real Life. As opposed to Fictional Life, where everybody is perfect. Except where the authors aren’t afraid to get their best characters dirty or have them say things that aren’t very nice now and then.
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