What Story Should You Tell?
Diana M. Raab -- June 10, 2008
Whether your chosen genre is fiction, nonfiction or poetry, you probably have a unique story to tell. The act of reliving and retelling childhood stories are common platforms for writers. We go back to those times either because they were filled with pains, joys or laden with unanswered questions.
As writers we are often intuitive about what we want to write. More often than not, there is a story in us yanking to be told. However, once in a while we get stumped and need some jolting about the story we want to tell. Often times the best story ideas come to us when we're not sitting at our desks. When out and about, it's important to be alert to mundane incidents in the every day--odd discoveries and chance remarks made by others in both social and work settings. That's why it's a great idea to always carry a writer's notebook--a small one for your pocket and a larger one for your computer bag or the corner of your desk. Weaving the incidents of your daily life with known facts, help make a story compelling.
Sometimes flipping through new and old magazines can provide even more of a selection of writing ideas. Each day, my morning ritual is to read the newspaper and/or a magazine, while my journal sits nearby, ready to capture intriguing story subjects. Sometimes a particular subject will send me surfing the web, which might lead me to another link for yet another topic or compelling story idea.
Just last week I was doing some research for the anthology I'm compiling called, "Writers and Their Notebooks," and I came across an article on teens journaling. This got me thinking about how it might be a good idea to write an article on journaling for teens just before they are getting ready to take off for summer camp. I might never have thought of it, had I not surfed the web.
In my desk drawer I keep a file folder called, "Writing Ideas," which is a collection of all my clippings from at least ten years back. Once in a while, it's fun to pull out the file and to see what might have fascinated me in the past. It's interesting to note how over the years, similar subjects and obsessions continue to be of interest. I think we are basically obsessed with the same issues during the course of our lives. Whether I get to use all the clippings in my file or not, is another story and not really important. The important thing is that the folder is available for those dryer literary moments.
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself when you encounter those moments:
- What is going through your head?
- What do you think about most often?
- Who are your villains? Who are your heroes?
- What are you obsessed by?
- What inspires you?
- Where are you in your life now?
- What stories are you drawn to read?
Whatever subject you choose to write about, you'll soon learn that the creative journey is similar to life--it is unpredictable, unstructured, mysterious and laden with miracles.
In her book, Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing (2002), Margaret Atwood says this, "Writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out into the light."
In Writing (1993) Marguerite Duras says, "Finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole, in almost total solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you. To be without the slightest subject for a book, the slightest idea for a book, is to find yourself, once again, before a book. A vast emptiness. A possible book. Before nothing. Before something like living, naked writing, like something terrible, terrible to overcome."
William Faulkner believed in a more profound reason why writers write. "An artist," he says, "is a creature driven by demons. He has a dream. It anguishes himself so much he must get rid of it." Whatever the dream is writers often loose sleep as they work on their craft until the project is completed and this is how they find out the story they have to tell.
In many ways, writing, and particularly creative nonfiction, could be thought of as a modern, guilt-free replacement for confession. This might be one reason more and more writers are drawn to writing memoirs and personal essays. Writing about real life experiences is like a snake shedding its skin and leaving a former left behind. It's easier to move forward when the baggage from the past is dropped. Franz Kafka summarized this idea beautifully by saying, "I write in order to shut my eyes." Fiction writers might argue that they write fiction so that they can tamper with the truth and proclaim that this gives them more creative freedom. Nonfiction writers, on the other hand, might argue that fiction writers hide behind the mask of fiction. As a writer in both genres, I believe that I see both sides. In either case, writing is a discovery.
Joan Didion in her essay, "Why am I a Writer," says, "Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
In essence, we write to know ourselves. Even our darkest--or unknown--thoughts, memories and fears can transform to reveal value and meaning to us. And with any luck, to our readers as well.