STATUS: I love the 80s, 3D. Because I never even knew about Freezy Freakies until that show. Maybe this was because I grew up in Wisconsin and we weren’t exactly the pinnacle of cool if you know what I mean. But if anyplace in the world needed Freezy Freakies during the 80s, wasn’t it Wisconsin?
So, I just got done reading SIZE 12 IS NOT FAT and one of the best parts of the book was the way back where Meg Cabot decided to write about all the personal things in her life that have inspired her books. Well, not ALL of them, but she did talk about how each one of her books stems from a little bit of reality in her life. I loved reading about that so much!
I think it’s really similar to how, in the evangelical church (and I’d bet any church for that matter), the best sermons are the one where the minister or preacher or whatever gets really personal and tells you about how they had struggles of their own (with weight, with anger, with relationships, whatever) and how hard it was for them to overcome those struggles. Sometimes they didn’t overcome them (that makes the sermon even better! Seriously!) and then they call themselves a “work in progress.”
Well, call me a work in progress that’s for sure. But everyone likes a good, true story. Or, if not true, then something that is packed with themes and issues they can relate to. And I think that sometimes, the only way to write compellingly about that stuff is to go to those really uncomfortable places in your own heart where you’ve been stomped on a bit and to examine the shreds. Maybe that means that, like me, you wake up a few mornings in a row with some black rain clouds hanging over you and the desire to eat every single carb that crosses your path. The point is not to exist every day in that difficult place, but rather to acknowledge that something is there that’s causing those emotions, and maybe that stuff is worth writing about. The good stuff is there, too, of course. But the real meat of the story will be your character convincingly getting through some real tough spots, which, if that stems from your own experiences, will be so much richer.
After all, as writers, we’re told to write about what we know.
I was going to end the post there, but I feel a little fake saying all this stuff and then not giving an example. So, here’s two. Look, I’m not typing this stuff so I can have a Dear Diary section; I’m typing it to say, woah, this is stuff that totally hurts to think about, but there’s power in these stories if I can find the courage to face the pain and write about them:
- When I was in high school, there was an issue with the way the Homecoming ballots were counted and my dad, who was principal at the time, lost his job over it. I totally thought I was over it, (I also believed it happened to my dad, not really to me) but 15 years later I realized there was crazy deep hurt there and it might be worth looking at — and healing from. And, yes, writing about.
- I used to belong to a Megachurch where the pastor had really great things to say and really seemed to help people, but then did all this shady stuff on the side. His wife, too. She had all this plastic surgery and seemed to spend more time at the mall than with the congregation. They, sadly, sort of wound up being the stereotypical preacher pairing that lets money and power come before helping people. My first husband and I had given tens of thousands of dollars to this church over the years and it was sad not to feel good about it, and also to feel like we’d been mislead. Not that god wouldn’t or couldn’t honor the fact that my ex and I tried to do the right thing there for a while, but it just felt sad to know it could have been so much more than what it was.
BECOMING JANE
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