Dear Ask Tina, 

I publish a weekly Substack focused mainly on my recovery from alcoholism, but I write about adjacent topics. My question pertains to my motivation for a potential post. 

A week ago, my young adult son got into some trouble. I don’t need to go into specifics, but it involved my son’s friend and his parents in a potentially dangerous and illegal situation. The other parents behaved in what I consider unethical and questionable ways, jeopardizing my son’s safety and even leaving the scene before the police arrived. When my son later apologized to them for his part in the situation, they were not gracious about it, to say the least.

For many reasons, I was very angry at the other parents, so I called my sponsor, as I’ve been trained to do in recovery, and I received insightful advice about how to stop being so twisted up inside about this situation.

I want to share my sponsor’s advice through my Substack, knowing it may help other parents facing similar situations. I began drafting this story, avoiding specific details about the incident to protect my son and his friend. But I stopped halfway through because something felt off. I knew I needed to check my motives. We live in a small, gossipy town. Am I sharing this story to pass on my sponsor’s advice, or am I sharing my side of the story in case the other family is spreading rumors about my son?

Do you have any thoughts about some guidelines I can put in place in my Substack to ensure my writing is coming from a place of love and tolerance (as my recovery program dictates) and not out of revenge?

Signed, Checking My Motives

Dear Checking My Motives, 

The fact that you signed your question “checking my motives” tells me you already know the answer. The urge to seek revenge is innate, and when you are gifted with the pen, revenge-writing seems an irresistible way to satisfy the need. Publishing something on the Internet, though, is permanent.  There’s no going back once it’s out there. So, the question really is:  will writing this piece cause suffering, or will it result in some benefit to the reader? It’s always worth asking: what am I really after in writing this piece? 

I can’t take credit for any of my thoughts on this matter. My head is filled with echoes of Elissa Altman’s latest book, Permission, a beautiful exploration about who owns a story. She devotes some time to this idea of revenge writing, and even confesses to submitting forty pages of revenge to her editor as part of a larger draft. When the editor sliced it all out, Altman tried to convince her—many times—to leave it in before she realized her editor was right. It isn’t that revenge writing is “bad,” she concludes, but it rarely—if ever—contributes to the narrative. 

There are varying opinions on the matter, of course. For example, Anne Lamott famously wrote in Bird by Bird, “You own everything that happened to you … If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

I believe it was also Lamott, however, who noted that if we write about someone else being an “a#$*%hole,” we had better write about ourselves that same way. Why? Because we are all complicated. The parents in your story likely possess a few admirable qualities as well. When faced with a similar situation, it’s hard to know what we would do. 

In addition to motive, though, Altman also cautions getting clear about your intent in writing. The two are not necessarily synonymous; intent is conscious, but motive can be sneaky. You touch on several possible intents and motives for writing: to inform/educate, to share a perspective on a universal issue, to preemptively defend yourself, to seek revenge. They are all valid, but perhaps the last two would be better as drafts written solely for the shredder. 

Even with the best intent, however, you can’t control the way your story will be perceived by any reader, especially by the other family involved. Brace yourself for the possible post-publishing fallout. It will happen no matter how much time you allow to pass before hitting “submit.” Just read the comment section of any slightly controversial post on social media for evidence. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide whether writing the piece is worth it.  

While you were wise to hit the brakes, that doesn’t mean you can’t publish the piece. Consider letting it simmer a bit more. When it has cooled, see if you can focus squarely on the lesson, rather than the offense. Make sure the story is about you and the ways the incident touched on your role as mother, community member, and person in recovery. Perhaps ask your son how he feels about the idea of seeing this all in print. I wonder, too, if it might be possible to focus on your sponsor’s insight about honesty in a different context. 

Whatever you decide to do, I know you will find the humanity in the story and eventually maybe even forgive the other family, just as you are able to forgive your son and offer him grace. It sounds like something beautiful might grow from this unfortunate incident. And maybe that is our job as writers—to find the beauty and resilience our stories offer. Revenge may be sweet—and admittedly satisfying—but it is short-lived and never beautiful. But you, dear writer, are. Now, let that shine through in your writing. 

Resources:

• Altman, E. (2025). Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create. Godine. Jaffrey: NH.
• Lamott, A. (1995). Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. 1st Anchor Books edition. Anchor Books.

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Do you have a writing-related dilemma? Send your questions to asktina@projectwritenow.org. Selected questions will be featured in upcoming columns, and Tina will ensure her answers offer valuable insights for writers facing similar challenges.