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

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Good Writers Are Exceptionally Good Liars

Photo credit: blog.mjscott.net

You pick up a good book to read it (fiction in this case) and you find the story too close to the bone to be anything but a record of a real life situation. I sometimes, catch myself beating my tracks back to the front page trying for the 'Disclaimer' (This is a work of fiction blah, blah, blah).

A good book translates you to a space where fiction no longer reads like fiction. You start making illogical assumptions and arriving at ambitious conclusions-naive contrivances to the objective mind. This is too real to be make-believe, you tell yourself.

I started this blog back in '09 on the heels of my creative writing instructor's suggestion. I appreciate her for going to such trouble to make me see reason: she wanted me blogging so I could develop a personal writing voice in point of fact.

Her second reason was quite intriguing; regular bloggers are offered a rare privilege of grooming a faith in their writing voice which they then, transport into their fiction. The credibility of their story is reinforced, as a result.

My instructor said blogging is like the laying of a foundation. You post anything you want on your blog; it's one surefire way to discover your writing voice and fix the timidity of the guy on the inside. There is also the issue of the authoritative voice to deal with. And that's the point I'm driving at.

The attitude of authority is the boost that feeds your fiction and sends it in over the transom, yet, maintains a ring of reality. The mindset of belief in the real things you blog about used to sharpen the unreal stuff in your fiction.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

Mark Twain

That's the beauty of it all. The pivotal thrust of fiction. The ability to 'distort' known fact, to cook up a story and still deliver on the payload. I've made something of a lifestyle from reading the introduction/foreword to novels before setting myself up for the main event that is, the story. I am often than not fascinated by the ordinary, uneventful occasions, which inspire a 700 – 1000 page-turner.

Writers never call what they do "lying". Such words don't do it for their trade. A writer's job is not a profession of deceit rather it's the writer's duty to take the reader by the hand and lead him/her into a world of might-have-beens. Taking pains to dig into the depth of things, tackling the utmost degree of the "what-if" question.

There is an element of truth in every genuine work of fiction. But unless the story is presented as the narration of a eyewitness, the theme and the overall purpose of plot is defeated.

A good writer brings his experience to bear on his competence to warp the facts and present a story that plows through the brain and reaches straight for the heart without putting his foot in it.

However, it is always the best policy to speak the truth unless of course, you can spin an exceptionally good yarn on a string of lies.

Keep your pen bleeding!

Akpan

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DAY 22: Creeping Easy

It was Mark Twain who said a novel was a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything.

My story doesn’t run the length of a novel-that’s at least 50,000 words last time I checked. Nevertheless, it’s a confession of sorts by a man who had done nothing through inaction or if I had to go the whole nine yards, through indifference.

I used to teach at a troubled children school just down the block. Let me tell you something, I knew a lot of kids back then who would have come to nothing if they were given ten shots at life placed the length of their noses. And then, there were those kids who were in the box because their family couldn’t keep up the love. Victims of a home that’s gone to hell in a hand basket.

Gary fell into the second group. A ruddy, solemn, tall drink of water who had his future cut out for him right from the word go. But Fate has us in the palms of his hands. The day Gary came to Queenstown College I knew a gem was about to be lost. I don’t know how I knew but I did know. The kid didn’t belong in that place.

It was like Gary also knew something was up because he did try to turn over a new leaf. I’d know more of that, if would were could. But before that time, he ran with the wrong pack and made a real mess of a pitiable existence.

I watched that kid through the windows of the staff room from up the second floor of the Administrative Building of Queenstown College. Watched him carry on through like tomorrow was here. I should have stepped in and curbed his enthusiasm when he started hanging around that kid from the Double B Fellowship. But you know they didn’t call that college a school for troubled children for nothing. Some of those kids would be serving time if they was old enough.

I don’t know how he managed it really, but Gary stopped trucking with that cult completely. In Queenstown, when a student decides to stop culting and start a new life, we called it creeping easy. I saw him in the library a few times, reading poetry. He was always going through the works of two great poets. It never ceased to amaze me how he was able to work out such chemical imbalance (the poets’). One was totally off the bend and living next door to hell’s industrious crew (Sylvia Plath) and the other always had a song flung up to heaven and still she rises (Maya Angelou). Maybe, Gary believed the works of these poets helped him understand both the light and dark side of his personality. If so, I prayed that he wouldn’t throw all his weight on the Sylvia Plath Option and tip over the tables all the way to suicide.

And yet the devil came. The cult Gary once belonged to had a clash with some other gang. These kids around these parts used weapons for gang fights-clubs and daggers. Luckily, none of them was ever spotted carrying firearm through out my stay at the college.

This is a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything to rescue a promising young life from the clutches of his own peer group.

Three teenagers are being questioned after a 15 year old boy was stabbed to death near his school. – News.

Notes to myself:

Of course, I’m gonna get this story smokin’ n’ tokin’ in the final draft:

Give the narrator (teacher) a name;

Name at least, one of the cult members.

Is there a need to state the family feud that created Gary’s emotional state?