Hello everyone, I've just joined and think this looks like a fantastic community. I hope this isn't an idiotic or irritating question. I find that more of myself and my experiences, both emotional and practical, are seeping into my protagonist and narrator than I intended. Perhaps I should turn to a third person narrative. Thanks for any ideas.
I'd always felt that the legal disclaimer ("all characters are inventions of the author and bear no resemblance to real people...") was a load of bunk. How can anyone invent a credible character WITHOUT drawing on real people???
Then I heard a talk by a bestselling author who postulated that we are channels. That the Muses don't just inspire us, but write THEIR story through us.
The jury's out on that one.
Debra, we write from who we are. It's highly probable that we don't always recognise the output as personal, but, plagiarism apart, it can't be anything else - we can't write from inside someone else's head, only our perception of it.
Writing is therapy, if it helps you to face problems, or calms you, or sorts something out that you cannot otherwise handle.
'I have also perhaps drawn to an uncomfortable extent on negative experiences I've had, which can be self-indulgent and tedious for the reader' - How do you know? if you are writing well, you are drawing the reader in to whatever the world is that you are creating. They don't know you or your history, will never meet you, and will not immediately say, 'Ah - this is autobiographical'. If you've done it right, they may wonder, but unless you tell them, that's as far as it will go.
This sounds to me like a defensive statement, and an apology - which you don't need to make. If you write well, the reader will be engaged. If you don't, it won't matter where the ideas or the inspiration come from. I think you need more distance between you and your character, which third person narrative would give you; otherwise your fears of what you are revealing about yourself will get in the way. At that point, your writing will suffer from slow strangulation.
Is it possible that what you actually want to write is your story, not your fictional character's? (You can of course do both separately.) Perhaps something inside you is crying out to be released, and you're trying to contain it. In that case, I'd say write the things you really want to say, in a different place. It may be just for yourself to read, but getting it all down on paper could provide a form of release that would then allow you to go on with your novel in a freer frame of mind.
All the best,
Lorraine
Hi Debra.
What you're experiencing is normal amongst authors. It's impossible to write without revealing things about ourselves. Academics learned much about the pysche of traditional authors by reading their novels.
I would just let the writing flow naturally without worrying about revealing things about yourself. After all, writing is about our experiences, what we know - a catharsis.
A few quotes on the subjest.
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works - Virginia Woolf
I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls - Mo Yan
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own - William Hazlitt
Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I hope that helps.
Good luck.