17. Writing About Other People

Q.

I write blogs and I recently got in trouble with a colleague for writing about him. I didn’t use his name but I didn’t say nice things about him, and he happened to read it. How do you approach writing about other people?

A.

Great question, and as a biographical writer myself, honestly this is something that I do think about a lot. In fact, in my case as I’m always trying to give the fullest picture possible, I find myself walking this fine line (of respecting others privacy and not over-sharing) quite often. Bloody hell, it really is a balance.

But since I’ve been doing this biographical writing stuff for so long now, I really have worked out some guidelines and rules that I stick to. Hopefully these can help you… and answer your question.

So, when writing about someone else, one of the first things I do now is use a fake name (unless they are an an incredibly close friend or in some cases when I want to directly credit somebody with something). Even so, I’ll only ever write about somebody else in a positive sense and/or I’ll only ever use straight up facts. With my writing, I’m here to document not cause conflict.

And yeah, I guess this is my rule: I’m either neutral or positive, never negative. It’s even like there’s an imaginary line that I try not to go below. However, on the odd occasion I do break this rule, but every time I do it’s done with compassion and sensitivity (and awareness).

Also, I’ll never go into full-on attack mode, instead I’ll always approach contentious points with how I’m feeling and offering my perspective. I dunno, I just reckon this is the fairest way to do it. Ethical.

Hope this helps.