It is only possible to write honestly about your own personal experiences. It is impossible to write about a person who is not ‘YOU’. If you have not experienced a certain situation you should not write about that situation. If you attempt to write about a situation you have not experienced, your account of that situation will definitely devalue the real experience. (Not even the most ‘skilful’ writer can write about a situation they have not experienced without devaluing the real experience.) No matter how thoroughly you research an experience (addiction, depression, criminality, sexuality, poverty, anxiety, religiosity, parenthood, marriage, or war), you will always be on the ‘outside’, and from the outside, you ‘can’t see shit’.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
It is only possible to write honestly about your own personal experiences
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9 comments:
it's really funny you said that, i watched skins for the first time on sunday night
it was "out of control"
bbc america
Can one honestly and accurately project one's own experiences into a different setting?
jillian i love skins. which episode did you see.
brad, 'within limits'. but why would you want/need to 'make shit up'. i am reading a blog by a starbucks barista right now and am really enjoying it and all the blogger writes about is working at starbucks. it works i think because it is honest.
i think it is possible for someone to get a certain feeling or emotion across in a made up setting, with made up characters. i mean that, i agree with you that it would be bullshit for a a college student to write about a 30 year old drug dealer, but maybe in a setting that is equal, with characters that are equal with the writer's experience, it is ok. i think then it is ok to make up things, because then a story could possibly be more interesting, but not be so obviously made up.
Honesty is a key element in any good text, I think. Although the unreliable narrator can be interesting too. If the blogger that you mention would take the kernel of emotional truth in those posts and lay the trappings of McDonalds or Home Depot around that truth, then it would be just as engaging. The setting is always transitory. The truth about any experience is eternal. One should always strive to write about the eternal.
brad i agree with 'the eternal'.
if you write honestly about your personal experiences, what you are writing will be eternal. if you write 'outside of your experiences', what you are writing will not be eternal.
pad-locked diaries are eternal, 'the da vinci code' is not eternal.
stephen, yes, writing about settings and characters that are 'equal to your own experiences' is honest. most 'best-selling' writers do not write about settings and characters that are 'equal to their own experiences', though. ian mcewan writes about wars he has not fought in (atonement), don delillo writes about september 11 survivors when he is not a september 11 survivor (falling man), jodi picoult writes about high-school shootings (nineteen minutes) and rape (salem falls), and all she knows about these topics is what she has 'researched' in books and reports. the best-selling english-language books are not honest. the world would be less 'fucked-up' if there was more honesty. this means that books that aren't honest are causing the world to be more 'fucked-up'.
connor,
i think you are correct
but you are missing something i think
my response to some one who says they have a 'dull' life and can only write about 'dull' experiences is:
go out and live some fucking life
then do some writing
there is a whole world of fucked up encouters out there for you to experience
fuck yes jereme.
everybody has tiny little bits of 'fucked up' in their lives.
and the people who have lots of 'fucked up' should be mining that shit for all it's worth.
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