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Sample Excerpt
This is a book
on how to succeed at lifewriting-my term of choice for people-centered
nonfiction writing: not just autobiographical or biographical portraits
or memoirs, but personal-experience narratives, exposés, and lively
features about crafts, hobbies, travel, pilgrimages, recreational
activities, and human relations. Lifewriting can be serious or humorous
or both. It can include any kind of subject-matter because people are
always at the heart of any endeavor, from theoretical physics to circus
performing to ghost hunting in medieval Scottish castles. It can be
written for any audience, from pre-school children to retirees.
Regardless of your background, your level of education; regardless
of your life experiences, you can master the skills of lifewriting and
publish your work. There is only one pre-requisite and you already know
what it is: a willingness to work hard at your writing. This
willingness to work covers the following ground:
· Forming a daily habit of
writing
· Keeping a writer’s daybook
· Understanding the
activities of composing: planning, researching, drafting, revising,
copyediting
· Learning how to market
your work
This book will guide you carefully through each
of these stages.
The Need for Good Writing
People have an insatiable need to understand their world, their
fellow human beings, and themselves, and for that reason have an equally
insatiable desire to read articles and books that will provide that
understanding. Good writing is forever in high demand-and with good
reason: it isn’t easy to write well. As with any activity, to become a
good writer you have to practice continually.
I teach college-level writing for a living, and I have some insight
into what it takes to acquire competence as a writer. For one thing, a
single course in composition is not enough. To be a good writer
students must write as often as possible in other contexts, not just
other courses, but in daily life. They must learn to think and observe
like writers-that is, they must no longer be content with superficial
definitions or explanations or arguments; when observing, they must look
for nuances, for things easily overlooked. They must learn to compare
and contrast and understand cause-effect relationships.
There another aspect of writing that often gets overlooked in
college writing courses, and which I take pains to include in this book:
the soul-nurturing, pleasurable, intellectually, emotionally
invigorating-and creative side. Creative is one of those
lovely words that speaks to the pleasures of imagination, to the freedom
of individual expression and insight. I have always felt that learning
of any kind, at any level from nursery school to graduate school, is
likelier to succeed when it is pleasurable, and essay writing is no
exception. It’s a misconception, and a dangerous one, that reason and
emotion are opposing, even warring, factions of the human psyche. A new
concept can stir up emotions. A powerful emotion can help solve a
problem. Our life experiences are comprised of thinking and feeling
intertwined.
How do writers get their essays written? Quite often, they get so
worked up over an idea experience the essay practically writes them.
For example, a woman suffers a traumatic experience that profoundly
changes her life (let’s say this person was robbed at gunpoint)-and she
can barely contain her rage, her feeling of being violated, her sense
that she had come within a hair’s breath of being murdered or severely
incapacitated. After the mind-numbing shock wears off a powerful
impulse arises: she must share this experience with others-not just by
talking about it, but by writing about it. Why is that? Perhaps partly
because of altruistic reasons. Most of us do rush to the aid of people
in need, and sharing experiences is a way of aiding others. But an even
stronger reason is the need to probe deeply into the experience in order
make meaning out of it-and writing is an effective way to do this.
The biggest challenge is not what to write about, but how to draw
material out of your past and present experiences, as well as the past
and present experiences of others, and shape this material into features
that would engage a large public (which is where the word publish
comes from).
How To Use This Book
Adventures in Lifewriting is designed for
self-instruction. While it is slanted for the novice, there is nothing
elementary or school-bookish about the contents, or about the activities
and exercises you will be asked to do. You will be challenged every
step of the way.
Which leads me to three preliminary bits of advice:
First, decide on where you want your writing space to be. It
should be comfortable, with adequate lighting, ventilation, and room for
books and a desk or table with room enough to spread things out.
Second, don’t skip or slight any of the activities. Read the
chapters more-or-less in sequence, especially the first ten chapters,
and complete the activities, including the exercises at the end of most
chapters.
Third, plan to review the material-and do the activities-more than
once. You’ll absorb more; the stuff you write will be different, and
that’s good. Learning to write can be described as a process of
discovering one’s inner resources-and sometimes that discovery consists
of many smaller discoveries and re-discoveries.
Fourth, and most important of all, believe in yourself as a
writer. Once you start putting pen to paper-or fingers to keyboard-on a
regular basis, you are a writer. The fact that you work at your craft
every day-not whether you publish-is the mark of a writer. That alone
will not guarantee your getting published, but you cannot get published
any other way. I’ve encountered many would-be writers with a rich
hoard of essay ideas and a lifetime of fascinating experiences under
their belts, and a flair for language to boot-would-be writers who dream
of “writing a heck of a story one of these days”-yet they are not yet
writers because they lack the drive to sit down, day after day after
day, even when their friends are out having fun, and getting those ideas
and experiences down on paper. Are you one of those non-writers
who talk about how successful a writer you could be if you only had the
time? Then I hope you saved the receipt for this book so you can return
it for a refund.
Unless you make up your mind now that you’re going to write on a
regular basis, nothing you will read in the following pages will be of
use to you.
What? You’re going to write every day come hell or high water?
Then I congratulate you on your resolve. Your journey toward becoming a
writer is well underway.
Now roll up your sleeves, do some stretching exercises, put the
aspirin where it’s handy, and get ready to work.
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