There is a quality of writing that comes through in voice, I think, and it is a step up in the learning process. I think I’ve just discovered it and while it draws on experience, it just as easily transfers to fantasy or any other genre that the writer may not have learned by empirical means. It is memory–as is all experience, thus tainted somewhat by perception and perhaps desire–but rather than the accuracy of the event, the accuracy of the perception and resulting feeling and change in thinking is filtered into writing.
I’m seeing some of that in my writing lately. Some of what my characters are up against I can at long last admit to having experienced in some manner in my life. All I need take from the memory however, is affect and effect. That is, how it affected me at the time and what effect it had in changing me. This gives me a better understanding of the characters.
Catholic and family oriented, my writing has been hampered in some ways by those around me. Even as a teen and young woman my actions were never to shock, but I did enjoy those many trips out of bounds that no one ever knew about. While I’d give anything to have my parents back, it’s obvious to me now that their passing has in a way released me from an obligation felt to, well, not embarrass them. Secrets kept from them can more easily leak themselves into my writing without fear. Other family members simply could never have such a hold on me as parental power, and in truth, the ‘kids’–nieces and nephews now in their thirties with kids of their own–would likely only think I’m cooler than they’d thought.
Some secrets I shared with my folks as we all got older. It’s fun to find that your mother never suspected that as a kid I’d take a can of black olives and hide it under my bed and sneak-eat them in the night. She was amazed when I told her and it became a shared experience to laugh about, changing its meaning as an experience from secretive to dumb kid humor. She had a sense of humor, thank God, and a sense of anticipation that she’d learned to keep at the ready for her youngest child. It carried her through from stolen olives hidden under beds to call-forwarding to cover a live-in arrangement.
So maybe I’m the only one who smiles slightly and shakes her head at what I’m reading in my own stories. But what I’m trying to share is the moment of it. That is, after all, what makes a character different or interesting; not what they’re up against necessarily, but how they react to it, whether it be an event, an environment, a change of some sort, or another character. It’s that oh! feeling, that punch in the stomach or the feel of the blood draining down through your veins that I can honestly bestow and am more willing to do so.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Exactly!
I share the same apprehension about revealing things that might be shocking or embarrassing — not to me, but to family, I suppose. But I believe that the adage that an artist (I don’t necessarily mean me, but I’d like to) never averts her eyes is crucial to honest writing. I saw Tobias Wolff at several events recently and one thing that stuck with me about his discussion on memoir was that in his book This Boy’s Life, he was very careful to talk about his perspective — as it was at the time of each event. I think his skill as a writer (and I feel the same way about Augusten Burroughs) is in the honesty and in the willingness to reveal unlikeable things, feelings and actions. I was just considering a scene I’m working on that goes into a character’s low self-esteem issues and in order to get into that head space, I have to dig into my own feelings, actions and emotions — not the ones I have now, but the ones I had as a much younger person. The temptation to give a character emotional distance and maturity is huge because even in fiction, one can’t help feeling that readers interpret a main character as autobiographical. I think the key is to access the essence of emotion and thought and to spin it into what the story and the character (not the writer) need. Spinning…hmm…sorry for the stream of consciousness ramble, but your post hit me like a ton of bricks!
The two of you are a couple of the most honest writers I’ve read lately. Maybe the weblog format starts us on that path, timid at first, protective. But there’s always that writer’s need to be seen, to show our insides. That’s when they leak out into memoir or fiction or the simple grocery list. (Honest, if artichokes or avocadoes are listed, your personality is coming out. 2% milk? Then go do something exciting.)