Writing Tips
I am sometimes asked for 'writing tips', which I find a strange thing to be asked, because as I writer my writing comes from within and it's not something that I have learned through doing courses or studying anything other than 'life'. Having said that I know how daunting a blank page can sometimes be, but once again that is something that there doesn't, for me, seem to be an answer. Those 'blank' times, or 'where to begin, and what' times, have lives of their own and when they've run their course they go the way they came; vanishing into the aether.
I was recently asked by someone who has had a similar life experience as my own; an abusive childhood, for some tips on writing that story, or rather their story, and so I am posting here my reply to that person in the hope that it will somehow help others in the same situation.
Everyone is different and this response that I gave may or may not suit everyone, but as I said in the hope that it may be of some assistance to someone, somewhere, here it is.
* * *
Writing the story of my own childhood was a cathartic experience indeed. My advice to you would be to write it and even if you never published it (for whatever reason and lots of people don’t, for many and varied reasons) I would still applaud you for having the courage to write it. However be warned, if you do take it on, during the writing of it, you will experience the full range of very intense emotions connected with the issues you are facing (because you will be facing them: full on).
To write any narrative at all you need to fully assume the characters and situations you are writing about or, in a literary sense, it won’t work.
With a memoir, and you did say your childhood has a similar theme to my own, you are sometimes reliving some very disturbing periods in your life, reliving incidents, emotions and details that you may have (quite deliberately for the sake of your sanity) buried, forgotten about; truths which may lie festering somewhere in a hidden corner of your mind. I won’t sugar coat it; it is a traumatic experience; but I did come through the other side a stronger, more whole individual. In the first instance, just get it out any way you can, just write it. You can start to make some kind of sense of it, organise it, when you have a body of work to work on.
* * *
I was recently asked by someone who has had a similar life experience as my own; an abusive childhood, for some tips on writing that story, or rather their story, and so I am posting here my reply to that person in the hope that it will somehow help others in the same situation.
Everyone is different and this response that I gave may or may not suit everyone, but as I said in the hope that it may be of some assistance to someone, somewhere, here it is.
* * *
Writing the story of my own childhood was a cathartic experience indeed. My advice to you would be to write it and even if you never published it (for whatever reason and lots of people don’t, for many and varied reasons) I would still applaud you for having the courage to write it. However be warned, if you do take it on, during the writing of it, you will experience the full range of very intense emotions connected with the issues you are facing (because you will be facing them: full on).
To write any narrative at all you need to fully assume the characters and situations you are writing about or, in a literary sense, it won’t work.
With a memoir, and you did say your childhood has a similar theme to my own, you are sometimes reliving some very disturbing periods in your life, reliving incidents, emotions and details that you may have (quite deliberately for the sake of your sanity) buried, forgotten about; truths which may lie festering somewhere in a hidden corner of your mind. I won’t sugar coat it; it is a traumatic experience; but I did come through the other side a stronger, more whole individual. In the first instance, just get it out any way you can, just write it. You can start to make some kind of sense of it, organise it, when you have a body of work to work on.
* * *
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Martial Arts | Martial Arts Photo Gallery | Child Abuse
Indies Unlimited l Videos
The content of this site is copyright protected.
T.D. McKinnon PO Box 309, Devonport 7310, Tasmania, Australia