When Fiction Feels Too Personal

Writing Toward Truth

I started this Substack to chronicle my journey writing World Beyond the Song.

I haven’t talked about it lately. I only recently brushed the dust from it.

So, I had to ask myself: Have I been hiding from World Beyond the Song in my essays?

I had gotten so caught up in the cosmology and the worlds I was building that when I finally turned back to writing the story—the characters and the plot felt small against the giants of inventing languages and ancient sky poets.

It took me some time to figure out what I was really feeling.

I landed on one word: exposed. Vulnerable.

Inventing languages and tracing connections between stars and human words felt huge—revelatory—but safe.

When I returned to the characters and plot of World Beyond the Song, I sat face to face with the overarching themes of the book—worthiness and connection.

It suddenly felt incredibly personal. Too personal. It felt … unsettling.

Yes—we write what we know. But I respectfully submit that it may be truer that we write who we know.

I had been touching on exile, belonging, narrative trust. The Guardian impulse and the Incubator’s inward retreat.

I had been circling worthiness and connection intellectually.

Circling is one thing; living is another.

Writing World Beyond the Song, not only would my characters have to live it … I would have to live it.

Exposure feels raw.

Vulnerability is the reframe.

We’re always vulnerable as writers, but I hadn’t expected to feel so exposed when I returned to World Beyond the Song. I knew I was bleeding into my characters. It was necessary. Cathartic.

But I paused when it felt “too personal.”

However, upon further reflection, I found the more personal it felt, the more surely it was real.

Of course, it felt too deep as I approached the center.

I feared reaching a depth in my fiction that could parallel the depth of my essays. I questioned whether fiction should even be that deep, or if I could even write it that real.

It might suggest imposter syndrome, but it doesn’t feel that way. I committed to writing; I hadn’t grasped the commitment to vulnerability.

Essays and nonfiction feel like approaching truth.

I had assumed fiction stood apart from it simply because we label it “fiction.”

Whoever said selling fiction is selling lies might not be the same kind of writer I am, because vulnerability in writing World Beyond the Song is related to how closely it approaches truth.

So, why have I shared this with you?

To widen the circle.

As humans we’re vulnerable and prefer not to be.

As writers we’re vulnerable, because we need to be.

Not narrative trust.

Simply trust.

When does fiction begin to feel true for you?