There’s a version of me that tries to be respectable. She sits up straight, chooses her words carefully, wonders if this sentence sounds “smart enough,” if that paragraph is “too much,” if anyone will read it, and quietly decides I should have kept it to myself. She is very concerned with being palatable. She edits before she even begins.
I don’t let her write. Or at least, I try not to.
What it means to be uncovered
Because the truth is, every time I’ve written something that mattered — something that stayed with me (and with you) long after I closed the document — I wasn’t dressed in any of that. No expectations, no imaginary audience hovering over my shoulder, no checklist of what a “good writer” should sound like. Just me, slightly uncomfortable, slightly exposed, and very, very honest.
So I write naked.
Not in the romanticized, poetic sense people like to attach to vulnerability. I mean the kind that makes you hesitate before hitting save. The kind that feels a little embarrassing. The kind that makes you wonder if you’ve said too much, or worse, if you’ve finally said the one thing you can’t take back.
When the writing feels hollow
There are days I hide behind structure. Days I dress my sentences up in language that feels safer, more distant. Days I write around the truth instead of through it. But I can always tell when I’ve done that, because the piece feels hollow. Technically fine. Emotionally absent. Like it could belong to anyone.
It’s not about oversharing or turning every piece into a confession, I’ve noticed. It’s about honesty in the small things. The thought you almost delete because it feels too direct. Or the sentence that doesn’t sound impressive but feels undeniably true.
Letting the story breathe
And getting there requires stripping away a lot: the need to impress, the fear of being misunderstood, the invisible rules about what a story is supposed to look like. It means trusting that what’s raw is also what’s real — and the real is what connects.
I think we’re taught, in subtle ways, to polish ourselves before we present anything to the world. To make sure we are always slightly out of reach. Writing naked goes against that instinct. Let it exist as it is.
And it’s also the only way I know how to write something that actually feels alive.
— Montse
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