Eneh Akpan Writes: Ernest Hemingway

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Honing Your Craft with Personal Experience

Write what you know.
Who made this statement? Who do you suppose, is the original source of that phrase? Mark Twain? Howard Nemerov? Gore Vidal? Ernest Hemingway? (These names are some of the numerous suggestions I stumbled upon while surfing the web for answers.)

So, who exactly said, ‘Write what you know?’

Do you suppose I’m the right guy to discuss the subject since I have no idea how the legendary writing advice (and possibly, the most misunderstood) came into existence?

What might be the case if we were to discuss the pros and cons of etymology and word origin pales in comparison with what I am about in this post. I’d love to point the strobe light on two unique examples of authors who put this quote to use, effectively with the sustained resonance initiating a ripple effect, which kindled a popular resurgence of their respective genres.

J.R.R. Tolkien is the mastermind behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Did you know that many of the scenes in his fiction are slightly altered re-creations of his real life travels and travails?

What follows is a slightly modified version of a Wikipedia article:

J.R.R. Tolkien Photo Courtesy: newstalk.ie

Tolkien enjoyed exploring Sarehole Mill and Moseley Bog in England (where he grew up after his dad passed away of a bout of rheumatic fever in South Africa–Tolkien was born here on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State now Free State Province in South Africa). His explorations inspired scenes in his books. His adventurous mind led him to his Aunt Jane’s farm of Bag End. The name which occurs in his fiction.

After his mother’s demise at age 34, Tolkien lived in the Edgbaston area of Birmingham in the shadow of the Victorian tower of Edgbaston Waterworks which is believed to have influenced the images of the Dark Towers within his works.

Maybe, I’m tackling the ‘Write what you know’ subject in its narrowest sense. Maybe, it’s exactly what I want to do in this article. The entire concept blurs into personal experiences and feelings and the imaginative ability of the writer to take a footprint he found in the dirt in some out of the way place and recreate it as a secret code that could spark world war III in his fiction!

Tananarive Due Photo Courtesy: chroniclesofharriet.com

Tananarive Due, one of a handful of black science fiction and fantasy writers, in an interview on NPR, tells how she came about the idea for her book My Soul to Keep (which won a Best Novel nomination in the Bram Stoker Award).

Due at one time worked as a journalist and columnist for the Miami Herald. She had at some point in time been in a relationship with a guy who turned out to be different. And who she believed was trying to fool her. What Due did with her personal experience was create her ‘perfect guy’ by re-inventing her former boyfriend in her fiction.

My Soul to Keep’s plot revolves around the life of a young newspaper reporter who is still in her twenties and who discovers her husband is a 500-year old immortal from a culture of immortals.

The places we are most at home become our comfort zones. The niche we are most familiar with and accept as the definition of who we really are.

These places invite us to explode into a million creative seeds if we will tap into its electricity.

Writing what you know can be a thrill. With a little bit of imagination, it can make all the difference between a lifeless piece of literature and a definitive work of art.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Twenty Tools for Fiction Writing (Part One)

Many accomplished writers have dropped a word or two on how to succeed in fiction writing. It’s something which every writer can glean a nugget or two from. I didn’t want to gild the lily I’d rather you try and figure out their messages for yourself.

There are about ten quotes delivered raw here on the craft of fiction writing. The part two follows shortly.

Enjoy!

1. You have to write a lot of fiction, if you want to be a fiction writer.

– Stephen King

2. All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.

– Ray Bradbury

3. Any skill you wish to master must be addressed every day. Even if you don’t spend a huge amount of time at it.

– Steven Barnes.

4. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

– Neil Gaiman

5. Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if ‘X’ happened? That’s how you start.

— Tom Clancy

6. What a writer has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

— Ernest Hemingway

7. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.

– Elmore Leonard

8. Focus on the story first. Ask yourself, ‘Will other people find this story so interesting that they will tell others about it?’ –

Nicholas Sparks

9. Keep a diary. The biggest regret of my writing life is that I have never kept a journal or a diary.

– Geoff Dyer

10. Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft.