21 Days to Awaken the Writer Within by Lisa Fugard

21 Days to Awaken the Writer Within by Lisa Fugard

Author:Lisa Fugard [Lisa Fugard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00


As a writer, your life experiences have immense value, which is why today’s topic is about writing what you know.

Are you familiar with what it’s like to grow up in a small village where everyone knows everyone else’s name? Do you know what it’s like to be adopted and then years later to meet your birth mother? Let’s try some seemingly more prosaic examples. Are you familiar with what it’s like to take the same bus route to work for a decade? Do you know what it’s like to live in a housing development where all the houses look the same? You could write an essay about any of these. You could write a story. Because I’ll bet that intertwined with those “facts” is your knowledge of what it means to be vulnerable, to be obsessive, to strive.

In the above paragraph I’ve interpreted that saying often heard in writing workshops, “write what you know,” in a more literal way. But there’s another way of interpreting “write what you know,” and that is to explore the emotional truths or dynamics that you know well. We’ve all experienced loss, moments of transformation, of staying the course, of having change thrust upon us. But maybe there is an emotional leitmotif in your life so far—some experience, some particular emotional flavor that keeps being thrust upon you, that you taste again and again. This, too, is fertile ground for a writer.

While we’re talking about this, let me clarify the difference between an autobiography and a memoir, as it’s a question that often comes up with non-fiction writers. An autobiography tends to focus on a person’s entire life, giving an overview of the subject (which would be you, as it’s your life story), whereas a memoir tends to be a more intimate work, oftentimes focusing on one aspect of your life—for example, motherhood or a particular period of time.

Some writers are not comfortable revealing the intimacies of their lives on the page and relish writing fiction. In fiction, skittish writers have a veil behind which they can disclose all their truths in a safe yet revealing way. As Virginia Woolf said,“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”

Some authors work on pieces that can be called autobiographical fiction. The writer Pam Houston does this and in response to all the interviewers who ask how much of it is true, she slyly came up with the number 82 per cent. Here she talks about her process and the difference between factual truth and emotional honesty:

My books always come from events, people, and places I have experienced or at least witnessed, but I also want to be free to mold and shape those events into the most meaningful story, the emotionally truest (as opposed to the most factually accurate) story, which sometimes means merging and shifting and tweaking reality to fit whatever demands the story begins to make on the material.



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