The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked… that’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.

Neil Gaiman

Two years ago, when I first ‘came out of the closet’ as a writer, I hired a moderately well known memoirist as my teacher. As the first person to critique my writing (since school), he was incredibly helpful and encouraging. At first.

Then the harsher messages started to come. He bluntly told me I was trying to write memoir while staying completely concealed and safe, which to him was an epic fail. I didn’t like that advice one bit, considering I was completely overtaken by panic about revealing these most private and personal aspects of my inner and outer lives. I was convinced that I was getting completely naked with my readers, while he claimed I was as bundled up as an Arctic explorer.

It took some time to realize that memoir was not my genre – I am much more interested in the lesson than in the sordid details of the experience – but the teacher’s harsh guidance actually had truth in it. I needed not only to ‘write naked’, I needed to live naked.

I now understand that writing naked could be the key to turning around many aspects of my life that had been creating undesired outcomes. I understand that if I don’t care enough about the story to sit squarely inside it (instead of safely from a distance), why should anyone else?

It is an ongoing process of revelation for me, one veil at a time. Not to completely abandon my need for privacy, but to allow myself to be seen.

The novel that I began one year ago as a playful experiment sits next to me, as a pile of actual paper, ready to be delivered to its first readers in a few days. It makes me blush (and cringe) to think that any other eyes than mine will read it. But I know it must be done.

The collection of spiritual essays (my important work) that I’ve been sitting on for years now, lives only on the hard drive of my computer, my ability to tolerate scrutiny of my most personal work not quite developed enough.

And now there is a third project, entitled Standing Naked in Times Square, which documents the process of writing my private truth for public consumption. It is embryonic; its final form may well be a poem, and essay, or a multi-volume tome. Either way, it is as insistent about being born as my daughter was.

Do you have a story about ‘coming out’ in whatever form that took? Is the idea of full revelation exciting, terrifying, something else? I would love to hear your stories, as inspiration and support for my own journey. Please share.