Public Me, Public You

When the great Nora Ephron died, the shock was that she died from a long illness she completely hid from the public. 
This was the Nora Ephron whose reputation was as a revealer of personal warts. The Nora who wrote so poignantly about the betrayal and disillusion of her marriage in Heartburn; the struggles with her aging appearance in I feel bad about my neck, and gave the same impression of intimate candor in her essays published by the New Yorker. 
This wonderful storyteller, who could be thought of as the original blogger, was the same Nora Ephron who was diagnosed with a terminal illness six years before she passed away, and shared none of it. Not with the public, anyway.

For me this makes perfect sense; she shared of herself, but not all of herself. This is what I do in my life and in my writing. This is what I do on this blog.

Here are my Public Me rules:

*Do not lie, fib, or invent glories. Praise should come from someone else.

*Share your failings if you think someone may find it helpful. Writing is about getting out of the isolation booth.

*Do not push all your warts on others.

* Never ever, no matter how tempting, share your children’s warts. Or your identified friends’. Or anyone who isn't begging you to do it.

*If you choose to write a rah-rah-aren't-things-grand-in-my-corner sort of blog, that’s all right. But no one wants to read those for long. Just the sunny-side makes a blogger a dull girl.

Public me is thoughtful.  Always navigating what to say, where, why, when, and to whom. No different than the “W”s of story telling.

I haven’t been diagnosed (touch wood and Tfoo-Tfoo) with anything interesting, and unlike Ms. Ephron I might have shared such. The private/public filter is a personal one. But wherever it’s drawn, I’m aware of it.