Skip to main content

booky blogs

While stumbling around this blog called The Elegant Variation, I discovered a really great article on autobiographical fiction written by Melvyn Bragg.

I'll quote the same passage from the article that Mark Saavas did:

It is often thought that autobiography cannot reach into the core of fiction; that the author’s own direct experience is too limiting a factor. That only if you step wholly outside yourself can fiction be formed. But why not step inside yourself? The brain, we now know, is more complicated than the universe, and we are just at the beginning of the exploration of what happens in there. What better laboratory for fiction than the brain that writes it? The more I write fiction, the more I see it as the best way to get at the truth and the only reason for writing it. Autobiography can be a high road to that end.

Yes, it might be nine months old, but the article really speaks to me...What do you think?

Comments

Tina Lynn said…
I think every work of fiction I write shows some other part of me. Perhaps, parts that no one really knows, even me, until it comes to me.
Travener said…
I agree with everything that Tina Lynn said. There's always some of me and my life in my fiction. How could it be otherwise?
Roni Loren said…
I definitely put myself in to my writing. When my husband and friends read my stuff, they catch all those little things that are me.
Will said…
Always in any of my work, I find one character that is basically me and my reactions if I were in that character's shoes. In the novel I'm writing right now one of the lead characters is a cop, and I write him as how I would be if I was a cop. You know, we writers are basically playing pretend like we did as little children. Now we just write it down to share with others.

Popular posts from this blog

My "Fucher"

Over a year ago, my mom and dad decided to clean clutter out of their own house and, in an attempt to streamline, they went ahead and gave me boxes of things they had saved from my childhood -- if I'm honest, things I didn't really expect I see until they died or something gruesomespice like that. Whatever, it's fine. I'm not complaining about it, even though it isn't like I really have the room in my house for boxes of cards I was given when I was five, or worksheets and stories I wrote in the second grade. I hadn't even really dug into those boxes until last night. I found one little "story" I wrote (and we'll use the word story lightly here) called MY FUCHER. (It took me a minute to realize I'd meant MY FUTURE.) Hilar. My Fucher I want to mary a boy who will stay home all day and clean the house. I would not stay home. I would work as a singer or hope to. I want to have a babey girl. I would name her Lynn or Trecey or Nciol. I woul...

Brett and Alice's Writing Style is the Real Crime Here

Here is a nearly sentence-by-sentence reconstruction of Brett and Alice's most recent episode of their podcast "The Prosecutors" - titled Adnan Syed is Guilty. I will not be utilizing the strikethrough in every sentence but will do so when I am compelled and will try to bold sections I've added. I've highlighted some of my favorite and most poignant edits.  I've tired and failed to stay away from a bit of snark. This endeavor was exhausting.  My work will illustrate how Brett Talley and Alice LaCour use narrative spin to bring you their version of events that they want to, for whatever reason, call "facts." I start just before the 4 minute mark.  Transcript So,, Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee dated for quite some time  when they were in high school, starting around March 1998. They’d stay together for the next 9 months or so, though they broke up twice during that period.   They were on-again off-again until around Halloween and broke up for good before...

in which i have a birthday and a giveaway

The blogger as a child. p.s. it's my birthday. And people at Starbucks like me. (I did get this for free, but it was not for the benefit of my blog.)  (Obvi, it was a gift .) There's a cupcake in that box! There's a hazelnut latte in that cup! In other news, I'm having a 100 Followers/ It's my birthday giveaway. You should enter. I'm giving away the following goodies: 1. A $25.00 VISA giftcard. 2. An original poem, which will be hadwritten and autographed on pretty paper. It might be about love, about being a writer, or maybe the winner will be able to choose the topic. We shall see. This giveaway is a bit seatofthepantsspice. 3. A frame from my wedding day. In fact, this very frame: 4. A mystery. The fourth goodie will be a surprise until you open the package! 5. The whopper: I will dedicate a karaoke song to you, personally, and put it on my blog, vlogger style. If you want to enter this smashing contest: leave a comment. 1 entry if you follow and comme...