My Little Life or the World at Large?
I used to write about autobiographical things disguised as fiction. I adhered to my college creative writing professor's admonition to write what I knew.
Then, after I had mined my life for enough material--and of course there's still volumes of it . . . but maybe I'm bored with the whole affair . . . I started looking outward.
I don't know if that is a logical progression as a writer. Or if I just happen to be the type of person who does that. I find myself, as I get older, rather than retreating into my own little world and my own little life, wanting to more vigorously go out there and do something.
So I read this in the NY Times, 16 minutes ago (ah, the age of the Internet!). A Buddhist nun killed and Tibetan children marched to who knows what fate by the Chinese government. I sometimes want to shake the world out of its complacency.
As a writer, I am working on a proposal for a thriller intersecting what is going on in Dafur with a university professor here in America. And I realized, even more so after reading the story in the Times, that I am increasingly leaving the personal for stories intersecting the world stage with a single life. A single person who is dragged into circumstances that change him or her. I did it in INVISIBLE GIRL, where Maggie had both a personal search and a larger one related to a crime committed during the Vietnam War.
And I realized this is all why I am struggling with two chick lit proposals I have. They're not funny enough or punchy enough . . . and I think it's because my writing has changed and I am leaving the smaller world of two lovers and whether or not they can make it work, and traveling to the world at large.
How about you? What trajectory has your writing taken? When you look back at writing from years ago versus today, what do you see? Is there a clear path? Does it reflect personal changes?
Then, after I had mined my life for enough material--and of course there's still volumes of it . . . but maybe I'm bored with the whole affair . . . I started looking outward.
I don't know if that is a logical progression as a writer. Or if I just happen to be the type of person who does that. I find myself, as I get older, rather than retreating into my own little world and my own little life, wanting to more vigorously go out there and do something.
So I read this in the NY Times, 16 minutes ago (ah, the age of the Internet!). A Buddhist nun killed and Tibetan children marched to who knows what fate by the Chinese government. I sometimes want to shake the world out of its complacency.
As a writer, I am working on a proposal for a thriller intersecting what is going on in Dafur with a university professor here in America. And I realized, even more so after reading the story in the Times, that I am increasingly leaving the personal for stories intersecting the world stage with a single life. A single person who is dragged into circumstances that change him or her. I did it in INVISIBLE GIRL, where Maggie had both a personal search and a larger one related to a crime committed during the Vietnam War.
And I realized this is all why I am struggling with two chick lit proposals I have. They're not funny enough or punchy enough . . . and I think it's because my writing has changed and I am leaving the smaller world of two lovers and whether or not they can make it work, and traveling to the world at large.
How about you? What trajectory has your writing taken? When you look back at writing from years ago versus today, what do you see? Is there a clear path? Does it reflect personal changes?
posted by Erica Orloff at 4:19 PM
12 Comments:
I think it's marvelous that you're evolving as a writer, Erica. As painful as it might seem right now (and maybe it's not painful at all, but liberating), I think it's essential to spread your wings and give the great beyond a go. From what I've read, you've never exactly played it safe anyway. You've gone for the far reaches of genre, and now you're ready to take it a step even further.
Go for it.
Shoot from the hip.
Write the story YOU need to write.
I'm looking very much forward to reading it.
Hi Jude:
It's just interesting . . . as writers' we leave a trajectory, a path, that you can actually go back to and really examine, versus maybe a more traditional career where past jobs fade away and there isn't neceessarily something later, where you can SEE how you have changed.
E
Calling it a clear path would be like calling the Rocky Mountains hills, but...I can definitely see a weaving trail. I grew up in a family of ostriches, you know, head in the sand, if we don't talk about it, its not there, if we have to talk about it, sugar coat it. I think thats why I began by writing series romance. HEA blah blah. I've got 3 done and they've all been embraced by various writers groups as 'touching, as good or better than some published stuff' again, blah blah.(probably those stroking groups you talked about yesterday that I was lucky to escape) The point is, I haven't done a thing with them because they don't feel like me. I read them back and think I'm fulla $hit.The more I write, the more I find issues that interest me or move me emerging. They are usually not pretty and often not HEA, but I'm proud of the fact that I have been able to mine a vein of honesty in my writing. When mom and auntie started disliking and being uncomfortable with things I wrote, I actually felt I was making progress!
But I still haven't stepped out like you have. I remain in the 1st,2nd or 3rd hand contact category. Part of that is the fact that I can become obsessive about research, weeks at the library or on the net and I've learned a ton--but written none! Maybe once I can get that under control, they'll be better, PUBLISHABLE things to come.
In Invisible Girl, you did an excellent job of integrating not just details of the war, but the important aspect of how far reaching the atrocities there were. It wasn't an 'issue' story, but a story of how the issues affect people. Much better impact!
Whew! Verbal diarrhea in high gear this morning. Gotta go see if I can apply some of it to the wip!
Hi Lainey:
I suppose my so-called trajectory is rather erratic, too! :-)
As for Invisible Girl . . . what I wanted to get across was war and the PEOPLE in the villages. Today they released a figure--665,000 Iraqis killed since we invaded. What a horrific number! But most people will drink their coffee this a.m., and read the paper, and see that NUMBER as a statistic. They won't match it up with an oprhan or a mother who's lost her children, or an entire family wiped out. They'll distance themselves from it somehow. So I think when writers--no matter what the story--can take a big picture issue, and make it personal somehow, then you really have something that can capture a reader's heart.
E
Yeah, it has.
It's grown more complex--one reason why I find it difficult to write short stories, because complex and short don't go very well together.
It's darker. I'm more willing to dig down to make it work. If I'm going to have cry whilst writing it, that's what I'll do.
It's also why I don't write romance any more--lots of unsuccessful attempts before I got it into my head that it's not for me, not at this point.
Hi May:
I'm working on a paranormal now . . . and definitely digging deep because the protagonist is a drug addict. But somehow I enjoy the dark stuff. Like doing sit-ups or crunches for a writer, flexing those muscles (not that I EVER do sit-ups or crunches!). LOL!
E
I like the challenge. But sometimes it's like hell--you know, you're on the treadmill, your lungs are burning and you think you can't make it to the end.
I'm with Jude on this one... "Write the story YOU need to write."
There is always a way to show small-to-big and big-to-small. We all exist in the human condition. That is how we relate to each other. If your characters can be human enough that the reader can relate to them, you have it.
Heh...my writing's gone the opposite way. I used to write stuff so grim, so dark and edgy that *I* had trouble reading it :) A few months fter I had my son, 9/11 happened. I stopped writing altogether for a couple of months...stunned like everybody else. But then I started reading books with sparkle in them. Funny books..."trashy" books where people ended up happy at the end. It was a desperately needed breath of fresh air. And those kinds of stories got me writing again.
My books still have a lot of angst creeping around in them...but my characters all reach at least for a lifeline. Now that I think about it, they choose to search for meaning, something like what Viktor Frankl said :)
Michele
Michele:
Your post was a breath of fresh air! :-)
I have to say, even my darkest stuff has my characters turning toward the light at the end.
E
Ha...I had a long talk with a musician friend of mine yesterday about writing. And he said when you're out of your comfort zone all of the time, sometimes it feels good to read a book that gives you one to snuggle up in.
I know much of great literature is meant to provoke and to make the reader rethink the obvious, but I do that to myself ALL THE TIME. It's such a relief to read something hilarious instead...I'm a great fan of Jennie Klassel, who combines earthy humor and painful personal evolution in such an amusing way :)
thanks again for the awesome posts :)
Michele
Michele:
That's a great observation. Sometimes I re-read Jane Eyre precisely because I know it so well, know how it's going to end and so forth. Like curling up in a favorite afghan.
E
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