Like many an aspiring writer with a secure attachment style and zero psychotropic substance habits, I wrote a book. The book lives on my desk as approximately three hundred unbound 8 by 11 pages. From time to time, I work on it. My process primarily entails lifting the title page, reading the first paragraph, replacing the title page, and lying down on my floor saying ‘UGHHHHH,’ until someone comes to shake me out of it – just like Virginia Woolf.
Lately, I cannot work on it. This is not because I would rather be impaled through the abdomen with a flagpole than do rewrites, but it is because I have become obsessed with a linguistic concern that haunts all my waking hours. It resounds in my head like some horrible tinnitus I acquired by stealing a religious object out of a temple on an expedition in the Amazon. Like Poe’s tell-tale heart beneath my floor boards, it is driving me mad. I am haunted, possessed. But it’s not a heart and it’s not under my floor. It’s the ping of an article popping into my inbox referring to some new book or piece of art as ‘deeply personal’. WTF is ‘deeply personal’?
There’s a deeply personal cabaret show. Deeply personal jewelry art. Deeply personal subtle merch. Prince Harry’s ghost-written memoir. Anderson Cooper on a podcast. A restaurant closing in San Francisco. A statement posted by a Z-list reality star on Instagram.
On The New York Times homepage, in a tiny media box, I find a benign illustration of a volcano erupting in a cheerful manner and, beneath it, the words: ‘Causes for anger are deeply personal. Take our quiz to find out what sends you flying off the handle.’ My face turns the same Crayola-purple as the illustrated volcano, and I haven’t even taken the quiz. Then I consider the possible trigger: perhaps my own writing is shallow and impersonal? Or maybe the problem is other people, as problems usually are. To better understand this threat, I run a search on Google trends.
My results reveal that we are approaching a deeply personal crisis point. Soon everything that ever happens on the planet will be described as ‘deeply personal’. Getting a joint checking account? Deeply personal. Writing a memoir? Duh. Getting an abortion? You guessed it!
Each day brings the publication of new books hailed in blurbs by respected writers who totally, absolutely, most definitely read the books they are endorsing, as ‘deeply personal’. Which leads me to question if there is still a place in today’s publishing world for writing that is shallowly impersonal, like mine.
In order to avoid alienating the authors of important works of shallowly impersonal writing (i.e. me), I propose a new standard, a comprehensive list of the only things that should henceforth be described as ‘deeply personal’:
- A colonoscopy;
- A memoir, if it includes at least five anecdotes about early sexual experience, at least two of which must be traumatic;
- A colonoscopy performed without anesthesia during a writing workshop while your peers give you feedback like: ‘When you talked about getting impaled by a flagpole, that part didn’t really work for me.’
- Getting impaled by a flagpole;
- Going spelunking with a literary agent whose #manuscriptwishlist includes the descriptor ‘deeply personal’;
- Going spelunking with a literary agent whose #manuscriptwishlist includes the descriptor ‘deeply personal’ and, when you reach the bowels of the tunnels, you turn back to discover they have abandoned you;
- Going spelunking with a literary agent whose #manuscriptwishlist includes the descriptor ‘deeply personal’ and, when you reach the bowels of the tunnels, you turn back to discover they have turned into famed literary agent Andrew Wylie and he gives you feedback on your work that is the spiritual equivalent of being impaled by a flagpole;
- My second book.
If we can all get on board with this updated guidance for usage, I feel confident I will be able to move to the next phase of my revision process: reading to the third or fourth page before I say ‘UGHHHHH’ and give up.
After all, I am human, and so everything human is deeply personal to me.
Kara Panzer is a writer based in New York City. Her essays have appeared in Fortune, Insider, and Fodor’s, among other outlets. Find more on karapanzer.com