Our writing group has been workshopping each other's personal essays for two years and we've become so close that none of us can give honest feedback anymore when someone writes about family trauma or relationship issues that hit too close to home. We're protecting each other's feelings instead of serving each other's writing, and everyone's work is suffering but no one wants to be the person who says the brutal thing that might actually help.
More people experience this than they realize.
Intimacy can become the enemy of artistic rigor when the desire to protect each other's emotional wellbeing overrides the commitment to creative truth.
“Where Are You with Personal essay and memoir?”
If this sounds familiar, the Library can help you find the bigger picture.