I am Scared

On Dangerous Writing.

Dangerous Writing is a brand of minimalism that utilizes many literary techniques pioneered by Spanbauer and other Gordon Lish-influenced writers. The emphasis is on writing “dangerously” — that is, writing what personally scares or embarrasses the author in order to explore and artistically express those fears honestly. Most “dangerous writing” is written in first-person narrative for this reason and deals with subjects such as cultural taboos.

On the surface, that may not seem like a dangerous or even daring act. But it is. When the words one believes to be the truth about oneself are actually written, they take on a power that is no longer exclusively controlled by the writer. The spin that could be applied when the ideas were merely in a person’s mind or coming out of a person’s mouth melt away. The words lay the heart bare for all to see. Those words become a separate entity, an unflinching, unvarnished document of the self.