Many writers will admit they've been writing, like, forever.
I wrote poems in sixth grade as well as stories with Barbie dolls as main characters, with black and white photos as the illustrations. Then I was so busy writing for schools and for jobs that I did not write creatively again until about six years ago.
But one thing has never changed.
I write what I know.
But what I know, has changed.
I certainly draw some inspiration from memories of childhood, but my writing is based in the present with same-day circumstances and adult perspective. Certainly many things happen to us all as children, but do each of us bring it all into our writing? Is that all we really need? A really bad (or really wonderful) childhood is enough to mine for a shelf full of books? Ok, or even one?
That's why I was surprised that one of my favorite authors, had said the following, albeit a long time ago.
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
- Willa Cather
Perhaps that was true for her. I don't believe it's true for me.
How about you?
Many of my friends are writing memoirs - and if those memoirs begin in childhood then I think Miss Cather is probably correct. I think of Frank McCourt and Angela's Ashes. Yep, I'd say he gathered most of that material about his childhood in Ireland before he was 15.
Maybe even if someone is writing fiction with a character whose personality needs a childhood history and the author draws from his or her own experience.
But in general, I (most respectfully, Miss Cather) disagree.
5 comments:
Oh, ha! I am SO disinclined to EVER write about my childhood. It was the most boring, boring time of my life. Nothing interesting or outstanding happened. It wasn't even that terrible - it was generally mildly unpleasant and kind of a bummer. I couldn't wait to grow up so I could start having fun. Of course, for me, grown up meant about 13. And that IS about when things started to get interesting.
I always thought childhood, children and family (as in blood relative-type family) were highly overrated as a lifestyle. For me, it has been more of an adventure creating a family of like-minded beings on my own, from scratch. Which in a good part explains my memoir, and maybe even my cat's website and book. The cat stuff has definitely been written from scratch.
I've grown wary of the write what you know advice. I make stuff up. I suppose in a round about way things reflect my childhood because my childhood has made me who I am and all that. Childhood was a misery but I don't write about it because there are too many bad-childhood memoirs as it is.
Although, if someone needs to write about their childhood, then by all means they should.
I'm a writer. I make stuff up. What I know is that I can empathize when people different from me, and so I can write about a thousand different lives.
I find life experience to be so interesting. I love to hear the stories of other people. I draw on my own life and that of those I meet for inspiration and material for my writing.
I also find writing about personal experiences to be very therapeutic. It's a way to take all the not so nice stuff in life and shape it into art (and hopefully a paycheck!)
My childhood was emotionally dynamic and formative. I came to maturity early and had to enter the "real world" by default. With certain kinds of knowledge, there is no going back, and once a kid starts asking questions and getting answers (and I don't mean about mud pies and lightening bugs), the veil comes off and there's a natural path out of innocence.
I wrote as a child in journals, and I wrote stories. I was always a writer, but as I have grown into adulthood (and with peers coming into adulthood as well), I have had to confront the true relationship between who I am and how I grew up. It would be easier to ignore the past and act like no strings connect a girl to a woman or a divorce to a single adult. I am not a simple person, and my experiences--however long ago they occurred--are constantly being made manifest in new reflections as I write. There is a bottomless well of ideas to draw on from my childhood and adolescence. I don't think that makes me a certain type of writer or another, but any novel I write will inadvertently represent a greater part of my truth than fiction. Every writer has stories to tell. It just so happens that for many of us, Ms. Cather included, childhood was not conventional, predictable or vacant of material for prose.
Two months before I turned 30, the man I loved was murdered. My life immediately became Before, During, and After. Or, perhaps, Happiness, Anguish, and Numbness. There are lots of ways to divvy up my life, but none of them agrees with Ms. Cather's version.
I have often seen this pattern in my life. There was Cancer: Health, Sickness, Recovery. There was Downsizing: Employed and Secure, Unemployed and Floundering, Employed and Skeptical.
My view is that there are events which create walls in the house of time, setting up distinct Before, During and After rooms. Like any house, you can redecorate by moving furnishings, discarding them and buying new, or keeping each piece unchanged. Writing the book then becomes the task of turning the house into a home.
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