The Cost of Building a Career on Trauma
and why I've drifted away from the personal essay
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When Meira Gebel wrote a prompt tweet a week ago crowdsourcing tips for newly minted freelancers, she accidentally kicked off a fresh round of discourse that lit up Writer Twitter. The general consensus was perhaps best summed up by Nylon columnist Gianluca Russo, who responded simply “Your trauma deserves better than a $150 personal essay.”
I wish someone had told me that almost a decade ago.
When I started my career as a writer, it was in the rain shadow of the Great Recession, at the height of the First Person Industrial Complex. It was post-Gamer Gate and pre-#MeToo, when the old media guard was still wringing their hands over lost expense accounts and disappearing advertising dollars. I was young and hungry, sorting through the battered emotional baggage of my teens and twenties, on a Blues Brothers-style mission from god to help other people feel less alone in their experiences – starting with myself.
From the minute I landed an alt-weekly opinion column in my mid-sized southern hometown, I began building my career one tale of trauma at a time, and it felt like control. It felt like being an artist. It felt like peak adulthood. I didn’t know that working in first-person narratives would become something I had to survive as much as any of the controversial subjects and harrowing situations on which I built a reputation by putting them down in words.
Like many young professionals entering the digital media industry in the aughts, I lacked the training that has traditionally helped prepare writers and journalists for the pitfalls of the profession. I hadn’t been through an MFA program or J-school – or even many undergraduate creative writing courses. I didn’t know many writers with whom I could talk about tricky situations like the ethics of writing about other people, or which red flags to watch out for when pitching editors.
I was messy; I made rookie mistakes. I told stories that weren’t mine to tell and adhered so coldly and closely to Nora Ephron’s “everything is copy” credo that it cost me at least one acquaintance. It would be years before shifts in the conversation and language around mental health would give me the vocabulary to say things like “I had poor boundaries in my writing and in my personal life back then,” but it’s true. I hadn’t been through the therapy sessions that helped me recognize that my tendency towards codependency and oversharing were in themselves trauma responses, albeit ones that were easily monetized.
I know now that editors don’t always look out for the writers they work with, and indeed can try to make a profit off anyone willing to overshare or offer an unpopular opinion in exchange for a byline or a bit of the grocery bill. Take, for example, the meta-confessional in which former xoJane editor Mandy Stadtmiller infamously called herself a “former first-person human trafficker” for the site’s culture of grooming vulnerable media hopefuls and preying upon women who shared compelling stories on private social media channels.
This seedy, abusive side of editorial culture does outsize harm to disabled, BIPOC and LBTQIA+ writers, and particularly anyone at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. There are still too many barriers preventing writers who aren’t white, straight, cis gender males from accessing freelancing opportunities and staff jobs, particularly on topics that don’t directly pertain to their identities. For those who want to break into the business, even a bad byline can feel like a better option than no byline at all.
But we also don‘t talk enough about the kind of self-exploitation that can come from monetizing the worst moments of your life. I certainly didn’t see for a long time how writing about gnarly experiences I’d only just begun to process – from educational abuse at a conservative private high school to sexual harassment at work to rape by a longtime friend and romantic partner – would contribute to the way I organized my identity around the idea of being damaged.
It was a hard belief to shake, especially when traumas have a way of compounding. Over the past five years, I’ve grappled with all sorts of fresh losses, from family estrangements to the demise of once-dear friendships to the end of a romantic relationship with a financially and emotionally abusive partner. But I don’t count a loss for words in that balance – though I haven’t talked much about these experiences publicly, I’ve remained vulnerable with my beloveds over joints and drinks and privately poured my thoughts into a journaling practice for the first time in my adult life.
In fact, I hardly noticed how steadily I’ve become more focused on personal development than personal essay. Instead of offering up my moments of doubt and pain to the masses, I’ve leaned into a sometimes messy process of becoming that doesn’t fit neatly on the page. And despite taking a step back from the kind of work I once found so invigorating and empowering, I know I’m not alone in finding new ways to navigate the tricky problem of transmuting life into art.
I see confirmation of our solidarity not only in the kind of discourse that took over Twitter last week, but in the Literary Citizenship class to which I was invited to speak about exactly these sorts of professional considerations – the kind of class I wish I’d had available as a naif. I see it, too, in the way writers are increasingly turning away from the stadium rock-sized audiences garnered by brand-name publications in favor of cultivating cozy salons on newsletter platforms like MailChimp and Substack.
What I see among writers as a collective right now is a lot of the good work I’ve put in myself these past few years, writ large. It’s easier to speak truth to power and be ok when you have personal and professional support networks, sources of internal and external validation that aren’t tied to income or bylines, an understanding of one’s toxic traits and foibles. It’s necessary, too, for the successful essayist to find new methods of self-interrogation, to understand fully if you’re engaging with yourself in your work, and how your work is impacting your ability just to be.
Should you sell your trauma for a $150 check that likely won’t show up within net 30 days? That’s for you to decide. But you shouldn’t have to survive your own storytelling. And we need to agitate for industry and culture-wide changes that make personal essays less of a professional hazard.
Meghan O'Dea is a writer, editor, and urban historian who has written for outlets including the Washington Post, Playboy, Bitch Magazine, Sisu Magazine, Lonely Planet and others. Beyond her writing desk she is an avid pedestrian, traveler, adjunct instructor, public transit advocate, and literary citizen