"In Defense of the Vertical Pronoun"

Behind the scenes post on taking inspiration from Robin Hemley

I sometimes think that attacks on the memoir aren’t simply masking an upset stomach, a bad night’s sleep, or an acute case of snobbery, but are instead the death bellows of the wounded old-school-journalist, who still valiantly waves the banner of Objectivity while life, biases and opinions catch him in the cut and bring him to his knees. You bloody memoirists! My death won’t go avenged.

Not only is the self worth investigating and including on the page, but is it perhaps the only way to approach those slippery terms of honesty and authenticity. To write about the world without putting on the table your biases, your psychological indigestion and unhealthy sleep patterns, is in a sense to falsify—a kind of falsification not so bald as the memoirist’s who lies about his supposed war exploits, but disingenuous in its own fashion.

~ Robin Hemley, A Field Guide for Immersion Writing