I come from a tradition of writers (that may have started in Spain) who believe that writing is about telling the truth and by so doing being honest about one’s own self; in the hope that by relating one person’s experience of the world others may learn that they are not alone. It comes from the fact that my mother taught me that in poetry one cannot dissemble because the words will show-up your lying immediately.
Writers have to be fearless. Not only in being prepared to go in their minds where few would dare, not only in writing in good conscience how they have lived and what they know and how they hurt, but also in putting their lives on the line. Both in standing against tyranny and in giving their own existence to written words come what may (and what often comes is poverty and frustration).
There are many writers today who crave their ‘privacy’ but in actual fact they gave up their right to any when they published. You cannot divide the life from the work and if you keep things to yourself you are hiding them from your ‘readers’ – or more accurately ‘the world’. I know writers need quiet and space to work, which is true, but they have to put their humanity on display.
Otherwise we are just hacks in it for the kudos and the money.