Thursday, July 14, 2011

What I Know and What I Write

For years, I've been told that I should write about my childhood. My experiences were unusual, bizarre, and kind of unpleasant--so I guess some people find them fascinating. However, I have never been the sort of person who was comfortable with the idea of talking about myself to strangers as if they cared what I had to say. Now don't get me wrong, I can talk about myself just fine; once you get me started, I may never shut up. But the act of working on a manuscript about myself made me feel like I was being incredibly presumptuous, assuming anyone would want to read about some chick they don't know.

That being said, I did feel like drawing on my memories of that time. As writers, that's what we do; the things that happen to us shape our creations. I knew the story wouldn't have to be an auto-biography: I just had to take that period in my life and insert a random character to experience it instead. Unfortunately, the problem was I've just never been able to put a lot of my own encounters into my fiction. Watching what happens to other people and twisting it to create a story is a lot easier, at least to me, than explaining something that happened to me in an interesting, confident way. Even as a child I couldn't insert myself into my stories. It just never felt right. So making a character very loosely based on myself didn't help. Though I felt very strongly that the story needed to be told, it was just impossible for me to start something compelling enough to survive to the end. I tried making the characters very young. I tried making them much older. I tried giving the story a supernatural twist. I tried making it more comical. I tried writing it in third person, first person, past tense, present tense. Nothing could make the story flow. I was just too uncomfortable talking about this girl's life when it was so much like my own. I felt whiny, and I almost felt like I was tattling, talking about things that had happened so long ago.

Then one day, when I finally sat down and really picked the manuscript apart, I realized part of the problem was in the girl I'd chosen to take the lead and my expectations for her. This girl was far too passive (the polar opposite of myself!) to share the story the way I was envisioning it. This girl didn't see the world the way I did. She was too young and naive to grasp what she had to do to crawl out of her own situation. It was only then that it occurred to me that the story didn't need to be about her life or mine. This was merely a part of living. There are so many things that make up our existence, and the point wasn't to relay strange events like a laundry list. It was a journey, a young woman growing up as her relationships and perception transform and mature. Suddenly the story I had originally been trying to force completely dissipated, and a new story rose up. Through my character's eyes, I watched the world change as she left childhood and became an adult. The focus was no longer on the events in her life, but on the things that mattered most to her and how those things were affected by her encounters. As it turns out, that was far more interesting and plot relevant. For the first time, it didn't feel like I was talking about myself.

After an eternity of trying to write the same story fifty different ways, I feel a strong sense of victory in finally coming to terms with the direction this novel wants to take. It's nice to discover that I, too, can write what I know without feeling like I'm giving too much away. After all, this book isn't about me. Not even the pieces here and there that are based on things that did happen to me or to the people in my life at that time. It's about growing up and learning the truth about the world around us and how our pasts mold our futures, regardless of what our history might be. Reaching that realization helped me to get over my worry and embarrassment long enough to finally tell my story.

2 comments:

  1. Geeze girl, way to make me really interested in your childhood and your current WIP!

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  2. Never write for rubber neckers. Write from your heart and we'll hang on every word! Cheers -Kelly

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