Yesterday I spent half an hour or so rounding up my editing credentials for a potential client who wanted to know more about who I am and what I’ve done — happy clients, published books, industry connections, and so on and so forth. It’s an interesting exercise, this putting together of a public face to present to someone.
If asked, most of us would split people in two: they are inner (soul) and outer (body). I read recently, possibly in Strong’s Concordance, that the soul/body split is a Greek concept, while the Hebrews had an entirely different one: your inner self is who you are, and your outer self is who people think you are — your reputation or “name.” The narrower the division, the more genuine and whole the person.
For any professional, but perhaps especially for professional writers, there’s a temptation to create an outer persona that’s not really you. Writing can be intensely personal; it can also be intensely fake. The reason most young writers freak out when anyone asks to see their writing is that it feels so vulnerable. Maybe we can overcome that by cutting off the vulnerability, but I think I’d rather take my chances and do all I can to stay real.
The closer my outer self is to my inner self, the happier I’ll be — and the more chances I’ll have to actually talk to others in a way that impacts them. We can obfuscate when we write, but when we read, we’re always the real us. I think we owe it to our readers to meet them authentically and communicate out of who we really are.
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