Madame Tussaud's wax Lance Armstrong courtesy of Fotopedia

This week alone has been laced with the immense public fallout and regret of bad career moves. Lance Armstrong finally came clean to the nation about his snowballing history of doping, while it also came to light that not only did Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s girlfriend not die of leukemia, she never existed in the first place.

The literary scene is not exempt from similar mistakes in judgment, to put it forgivingly. Indeed, artists know all too well the stages of attachment and skepticism they experience when it comes to their own work. Last week, culture sites were all over the story of the aftermath of Alisa Valdes’s memoir The Feminist and the Cowboy, detailing how the life of romantic submission to a macho, cowboy-figure described in the book was merely a precursor to a horrific, abuse-fueled unraveling. It was Valdes herself who opted to speak out against the moral of her own book, bringing forth the truth about the abuse despite her publisher’s wishes and while admittedly putting herself in real, physical danger.

This “spoke-too-soon” phenomenon may especially plague writers who start writing when they’re young and generally less experienced—they are less aware of the world and more self-centered. Arguably the same could be said of Valdes, who, while no spring chicken when she penned her memoir, may have been brainwashed into a cult-like entanglement (at least according to Hanna Rosin at Slate), which is not to entirely forgive her wild delusions in The Feminist and the Cowboy. Regret is acceptable so long as we maintain some accountability for our actions.

This phenomenon is also undeniably more prevalent at a time when self-publishing, and the Internet, make it easier to solidify your words in print-form and searchable cyberspace for all eternity. Where writers of generations past may have published juvenilia they later renounced, we have reached a point at which we can publicly witness young writers develop, evolve and, of course, founder.

What is happening—what will happen to these generations? Will they ever learn the same discipline as their writerly ancestors, who often had to work indescribably hard to get seen by anyone? Will they shy away from a painfully unforgiving career path when they face enough scrutiny and shame and the bitter relentlessness of anonymous Internet commenters?

What will it be like when they grow up and publish respectable novels only to have their Tumblrs still exist in cache, or an ebook they wish they could erase? Will it matter?

In many fields, career-related regret and undoing have been a public experience for a long time. For writers, and artists in general, they are more on board than ever before—now the “undoing” has the potential to come before the “career.” Writers nowadays must either think twice about what they put out there or accept they’ll inevitably have to move past some degree of regret. Because we develop artistically as we age, and remorse is a necessary, healthy part of that process, it would likely serve everyone better to simply accept the latter.

It should also be stated that writing something you’re not so proud of later is a far cry from killing off a fake girlfriend or lying about performance-enhancing drugs for a decade.

Bruce Jay Friedman, author most recently of the memoir Lucky Bruce, will sit on the memoir and biography panel at the conference. We talked to the Upper West Sider about his long and thriving career as a novelist, playwright, screenwriter (hits include Splash and the story for The Heartbreak Kid), short story author and, now, memoirist.

You’ve been called the “hottest writer of the year” at various points in your career—how has that affected you?
I had a movie that was a very big movie, Stir Crazy [in 1980]. And this entertainment attorney, a young kid, said, “Don’t you realize you’re the hottest writer in Hollywood?” I was so deeply offended—that was exactly what I didn’t want to be. So I moved back to the East Coast, shut off the phone and started to write a novel, which was what I felt I should be doing.

But you also got that mantle for writing the play Scuba Duba in 1968.
Being the so-called hottest playwright is not so bad. You do get better tables in restaurants. You get your—well, it’s more than 15 minutes, actually.

Did all the hype around your work ever make you feel pressure about your next projects?
No, I always had an appointment with that next thing to write. I’d finish a novel and think, why not try a play now? I’d always go back to the short story—that’s what I’m doing now—that was always my anchor.
I think you will hear that if you’ve written a novel, it doesn’t mean you can write a play; if you’re written a play, it doesn’t mean you can write short stories. I’ve never bought that. To me it’s storytelling, in one form or another. And I’ve gotten away with it so far.

With novels and memoirs, writers often write from their experiences. How do you navigate writing about real people?
The person you’re worried about slandering is the last person to recognize himself in a book. However, occasionally, as happened to me with my first novel Stern, I was terribly concerned about my boss. I needed the job and I had him as a character, not the most lovable character. I disguised him in a million different ways, but still, he was a very smart guy. But he never said a word. The book was published and he gave me a raise.
Then I got in the elevator and a woman I’ve never heard of before gets on. She starts screaming “Why? How could you do that to me?” I’d never met the woman, I knew nothing about her. She identified closely with that character and you could not dissuade her.

How did you approach writing your memoir?
The struggle for me was trying to find the right voice—not so much what the book was, but what voice. I’ve got at least half a dozen different voices. Finally I decided to just be me, and then the book was relatively easy [to write].

There is so much pressure on writers now to self-promote their work and find commercial success—how can young writers deal with that?
To the extent that it’s possible, and that I have any advice at all, is to just really get rid of all that and write a wonderful story and let the rest take care of itself. I’m sure Salinger wasn’t thinking of promotional opportunities when he wrote Catcher.

Allen Houston, executive editor of Manhattan Media, will be part of the editor’s panel at the conference. For a full lineup of writers and information on the Writers’ Conference, which runs June 6-9, visit hunter.cuny.edu/ce.