Someone asked me once why I was pursuing a career in creative nonfiction writing. My answer to that was somewhat vague, since it is always hard to pinpoint which parts of my being make me want to write. My family’s history, my life experience, my point-of-view, my challenging childhood – all of these things contribute to why I want to write. They responded with the question, “Then what if someone had a charmed life growing up?” My response went from vague to direct.
There is no way that someone with a charmed life would ever want to write nonfiction.
This statement is not to exclude but to explain the personality of a writer. To be a successful writer, you must possess a keen sense of feeling and experience to be able to convey that feeling to another. This does not mean that a woman cannot write about a man’s experience, or vice versa. As a reader, what seems to me to be the most authentic means to tell a story is through honest writing.
I hope you find inspiration here and will be able to relate to the experiences that Lauren and I have as we pursue our common goal of writing honestly and successfully. (And to one day be published, for goodness sake!)
Sincerely,
Kasey Ray-Stokes
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Do writers ever view their lives as "charmed," I wonder? Even the ones that did live the charmed life from all outward appearances?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that any writer ever saw their lives as charmed in the sense that nothing bad ever happened to them. I don't even think that people who aren't writers have a charmed life, and if they think so, then they certainly are not perceptive enough to become writers. Not that I look for the negative in my life, but just that I try to see things for what they are, not how I want things to be.
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