I used to think the riskiest part of writing was getting it wrong. That I’d be misunderstood. That I’d miss the mark and no one would care.
Now I’m less worried about being misunderstood.
I’m more worried about being understood too well.
Because the more I write—the more I really let myself write—the more I feel like I’m inching toward something raw. Not confessional. Not autobiographical. Just… undeniably mine.
As I’ve said, I don’t write self-inserts. Still, I’m beginning to realise how thin the barrier really is between fiction and exposure. My characters are entirely their own—shaped by plot, theme, setting—but they still carry shards of something deeply personal. A tension. A silence. A worldview cracked in familiar places, twisted by different forces, but similar results.
It’s not deliberate. But it is precise.
And the more I write with emotional precision, the more naked it feels.
If I was going to remake that meme for this post, it would be “Tonight’s Episode: The Writer’s Psyche, Revealed On The Page, Naked For All To See”.
There’s a particular kind of vulnerability that comes not from what the story says, but from what it reveals about the writer. Not to everyone—but to the people who are looking. The ones who read between the lines. Who know what detachment really means. Who can recognise grief in a joke, or longing in a silence that lasts just a little too long.
They’ll see it.
They’ll see me.
And I’m not entirely sure I want to be seen like that.
I grew up on the idea that you should “write what you know.” I never liked it. It felt small. Literal. Limiting.
Now, I think the more honest version is this:
Write as who you are.
That doesn’t mean putting yourself on the page. It means letting your internal gravity shape everything that is.
It means your characters might inherit your distance.
Your voice might carry your sharpness, or your restraint.
Your plots might bend toward the kinds of conflicts you never quite resolved.
Not because you planned it.
Because you couldn’t help it.
It’s a strange position to be in—writing fiction that isn’t about you, but still knows things about you that you haven’t said aloud. Writing characters who are nothing like you, but who move through the world with your armour. Your damage, retextured. Your defences, sharpened.
They aren’t me.
But they wear something that was mine, once.
I’m not trying to stop it. I think there’s value in it, even if it’s uncomfortable. Maybe especially because it’s uncomfortable.
There’s a difference between performative vulnerability and emotional nudity. One is curated. The other is inevitable.
And if I’m going to keep writing honestly—if I’m going to tell stories that actually matter to me—then I have to make peace with the fact that somewhere in there, my wiring is visible.
Not because I’m writing about myself.
Because I’m writing as who I am.
And sometimes, that’s even more revealing.