The writer's craft: What you can learn from Elizabeth Edwards and Ricky Nelson

May 14, 2:41 PMNY Writing Careers ExaminerTad Richards

Previous Next

3 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the NY Writing Careers Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Elizabeth Edwards' new memoir has stirred nothing if not controversy. She's been widely and snidely attacked, and she's had her defenders as well. I'm with the defenders. Caryl Rivers in Huffington Post  says:

Let me offer up another explanation for Elizabeth Edwards' book, in which -- though you'd never know it from the media -- her husband's affair is a small part of the story of her life. Edwards, I believe, is seeking something more profound than mere vengeance. It's about who owns her story, and through that narrative, herself.

Connie Schultz, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wonders if Edwards' critics have actually read the book.

Those who read the book for themselves may see a different motive: Perhaps Elizabeth Edwards is simply trying, for the first time, to be Elizabeth Edwards.

You can read more in both columns, and the anti-Edwards opinions are not hard to find, either.

Most of us will not have the opportunity to be heard because of our celebrity, or the celebrity of someone in our families. But we can still learn something from Elizabeth Edwards.

Write your own story. Tell the story you want to tell, the one you think matters. If it's published and reviewed -- when it's published and reviewed -- there will always be people criticizing you for not writing a different story, the one they would have written.

But they didn't.

Remember what Ricky Nelson said.

It's all right now, I've learned my lesson well, 
You see, you can't please everybody so you've just got to please yourself.