shh, it's my PROCESS
* The ever-challengeful Chelsea challenged me to write a bit about "my PROCESS". I therefore combine her challenge with an entry I've already had in my head.
When writing fiction, sometimes I'm never sure how much of my own experience to put in. As expected, my experience is limited, because I'm only seventeen and still in high school and haven't seen much of the world. But I do have background and experience and something to say in certain areas and I try to take those elements and bring them to my fiction.
If you read one of my stories, there is always something about it that is true. Most of them are not based on true events, but they are all based on true emotions, or true questions or issues. There is something of my own experience, life, and emotion in every one of my pieces of fiction.
Sometimes I'm not sure how far I can go in branching out into what I do not know. I've found it easy to write stories where the characters are my own age, but doing so is very limiting at the same time. Waverly is the main example because the characters are all older than I am - not by much, but enough. Am I getting things wrong? Are the characters too juvenile? I won't know until I get older, I guess. But making those characters my own age would completely ruin the story because theirs is by no means a high school story.
On the other hand, sometimes I am also unsure about how much I want to put into a story that is complete truth. Most of my poems are based on true events or emotions, but veiled in metaphor - occasionally to conceal, but often because I find abstract metaphor arouses a particular feeling or association better.
Stories are different because they are less abstract. There is a plot, there are characters; stories are more complicated. Sometimes I've thought of something directly from my own experience and realized that it would make a good story, one that I would probably want to read - but have not written it down because I've thought, That is not for a story. It's a feeling of trespassing, of not wanting to put something in a story because it seems too untouchable in a way - not in a bad way, just in a, that is real, not story material way. Of course art imitates - and captures - life, but - well, I guess I'm still trying to figure that out.
I also don't set certain things down in stories sometimes because I don't feel ready for the task of capturing them in the right way. My monologue-thing for creative writing could be an example - it was true, but things could be read from it that were not true. In some ways, the truth can create fiction. As fiction can create truth.
Part of my "process" of writing is to take things in and let them wander around, then try to conjure up the words to capture these things - emotions, senses, places, people, times - in the right way. When writing, I don't worry about what is the perfect word to use; I start writing just to get things down.
Then I go back and revise - countless times. I type things up on the computer and print them out, and bring the papers around with me - to school, mostly. When I feel like it or when I'm bored in math or physics I whip the paper out and reread it over and over again, scribbling in the margins, crossing bits out and adding new bits in, revising like mad. Then I start over and do it again with the same piece of writing until I feel like I've gotten it the way I want it. Some poems I've posted on here have gone through seven or eight revisions (like "The Black Night's Alchemy" or "Confessional Poetry"), while some have barely been revised at all and stand in their original state because I like them that way (like "Most Subtle Migration").
That's the literal "process", I suppose. And the more subtle process is the gradual and abstract blending of fiction and truth, of spiritlike images and wordy facts, sifting and shifting together to form something... something.
When writing fiction, sometimes I'm never sure how much of my own experience to put in. As expected, my experience is limited, because I'm only seventeen and still in high school and haven't seen much of the world. But I do have background and experience and something to say in certain areas and I try to take those elements and bring them to my fiction.
If you read one of my stories, there is always something about it that is true. Most of them are not based on true events, but they are all based on true emotions, or true questions or issues. There is something of my own experience, life, and emotion in every one of my pieces of fiction.
Sometimes I'm not sure how far I can go in branching out into what I do not know. I've found it easy to write stories where the characters are my own age, but doing so is very limiting at the same time. Waverly is the main example because the characters are all older than I am - not by much, but enough. Am I getting things wrong? Are the characters too juvenile? I won't know until I get older, I guess. But making those characters my own age would completely ruin the story because theirs is by no means a high school story.
On the other hand, sometimes I am also unsure about how much I want to put into a story that is complete truth. Most of my poems are based on true events or emotions, but veiled in metaphor - occasionally to conceal, but often because I find abstract metaphor arouses a particular feeling or association better.
Stories are different because they are less abstract. There is a plot, there are characters; stories are more complicated. Sometimes I've thought of something directly from my own experience and realized that it would make a good story, one that I would probably want to read - but have not written it down because I've thought, That is not for a story. It's a feeling of trespassing, of not wanting to put something in a story because it seems too untouchable in a way - not in a bad way, just in a, that is real, not story material way. Of course art imitates - and captures - life, but - well, I guess I'm still trying to figure that out.
I also don't set certain things down in stories sometimes because I don't feel ready for the task of capturing them in the right way. My monologue-thing for creative writing could be an example - it was true, but things could be read from it that were not true. In some ways, the truth can create fiction. As fiction can create truth.
Part of my "process" of writing is to take things in and let them wander around, then try to conjure up the words to capture these things - emotions, senses, places, people, times - in the right way. When writing, I don't worry about what is the perfect word to use; I start writing just to get things down.
Then I go back and revise - countless times. I type things up on the computer and print them out, and bring the papers around with me - to school, mostly. When I feel like it or when I'm bored in math or physics I whip the paper out and reread it over and over again, scribbling in the margins, crossing bits out and adding new bits in, revising like mad. Then I start over and do it again with the same piece of writing until I feel like I've gotten it the way I want it. Some poems I've posted on here have gone through seven or eight revisions (like "The Black Night's Alchemy" or "Confessional Poetry"), while some have barely been revised at all and stand in their original state because I like them that way (like "Most Subtle Migration").
That's the literal "process", I suppose. And the more subtle process is the gradual and abstract blending of fiction and truth, of spiritlike images and wordy facts, sifting and shifting together to form something... something.
posted by Laura at 7:07 PM
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