Everyone Has a Story
As a fiction writer, I am fortunate in that I have lived a really full life, complete with family members who really should have their own reality show. Not kidding. Eccentric relatives, LOUD relatives, crazy but lovable people all around . . . and I've packed a lot of living in my years--some of it unhappy--divorce and unhappy marriage, a life-threatening bout of illness, high-risk pregnancies (baby#3 was born with me having a catheter inserted into my heart while in labor--and I went on to try for baby#4). But even the sad and difficult and grief-filled parts of life are fodder for fiction.
When people meet my family--boisterous and funny and a little left of criminal at times--they say how lucky I am. "They sure give you stuff to write about."
But that's where they're wrong in a way. I once met an aspiring writer who told me he had lived a timid, quiet, shy, boring life. "Nothing to write about," he told me. "I've been a scientist all my life. I never even got married."
But he was wrong--because even in THAT there is the story. Maybe, in my own take on living life fully, it is a tragic tale of a man afraid to love or a man afraid to take risks. Maybe there is tragedy in the man (not him but some hypothetical man) burning with resentments and filled with pessimism and a life unfulfilled. Or the man who has sat in the same armchair for twenty years, drinking himself into a stupor. Or the wan who tossed his wife and children away for a chance on what he thought was love--and gambled wrong. In these lives of quiet desperation, there are stories.
In the lives of the man who packs my groceries and the woman I meet at the park who secretly loathes her mother-in-law, there are stories.
We all have them. The key, as writer, is to pull them out and write about them.
I am lucky in I have a bold life. A reckless, wonderful life that I can draw on. But everyone has a story. Don't you think? Do you listen to the stories of others or just imagine them? Do you draw from others' lives? I'm curious!
Peace,
E
When people meet my family--boisterous and funny and a little left of criminal at times--they say how lucky I am. "They sure give you stuff to write about."
But that's where they're wrong in a way. I once met an aspiring writer who told me he had lived a timid, quiet, shy, boring life. "Nothing to write about," he told me. "I've been a scientist all my life. I never even got married."
But he was wrong--because even in THAT there is the story. Maybe, in my own take on living life fully, it is a tragic tale of a man afraid to love or a man afraid to take risks. Maybe there is tragedy in the man (not him but some hypothetical man) burning with resentments and filled with pessimism and a life unfulfilled. Or the man who has sat in the same armchair for twenty years, drinking himself into a stupor. Or the wan who tossed his wife and children away for a chance on what he thought was love--and gambled wrong. In these lives of quiet desperation, there are stories.
In the lives of the man who packs my groceries and the woman I meet at the park who secretly loathes her mother-in-law, there are stories.
We all have them. The key, as writer, is to pull them out and write about them.
I am lucky in I have a bold life. A reckless, wonderful life that I can draw on. But everyone has a story. Don't you think? Do you listen to the stories of others or just imagine them? Do you draw from others' lives? I'm curious!
Peace,
E
Labels: carpe diem, lifelong learning, stories
posted by Erica Orloff at 11:50 AM
8 Comments:
I'm inclined to say that it has more to do with a writer's willingness to examine in minute detail and to dig deep inside.
I'm not putting down life experience, but all the life experience there is won't be enough if the writer doesn't use it.
May:
Definitely. And you can, definitely, lead a more mundane existence and still be a great writer through the gift of imagination. Which is why that scientist friend of mine who thought his life was so dull . . . could have dug down and found the story, I think. Which is what makes a writer from a non-writer.
E
Erica, I think your friend could have too.
After all, I know of too many authors who have led mundane lives. I think it's why I write fantasy, actually, because my imagination is anything but mundane. :)
I often find amazing layers of character in people that view themselves as nothing special.
heather:
Definitely. My favorite thing is to ask couples how they met--and even MORE fascinating is to see how their perceptions vary--how the woman will say one story and the man the other. :-)
E
P.S. If you read my last blog post of eight random things--we don't vary. We BOTH say I threw a steak at his head. LOL!
My ex threw a cheeseburger at my head. It's not how we met, but how we broke up.
We couldn't afford steak. :(
Jude:
At least it was a machete or something along those lines.
E
Hey, don't give her any ideas.
Cheeseburgers are lethal enough. Especially if you actually EAT them. ;)
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