My Unstoried Life
I've not lived a storied life, and I know it.
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This was great, thank you. Well worth reposting this directly on my article if you can!
I was too young and too intimidated to retort that I *was* writing what I knew. I was writing my longings. I was writing my desire to stretch beyond the mid-size mill town where I was growing up. I was writing my desire for freedom, for adventure, for challenge that led to growth. And I wrote science fiction because I was not able to 'know' those things where I was.
After the retreat was over, I picked up one of the famous author's books and scanned the first few pages. He wrote first person, present tense thrillers -- definitely not someone I would have chosen for a mentor.
Writing about this now I suddenly wonder why the program directors chose this person. Perhaps someone with a bit more empathy -- and a bit more imagination -- would have been better to provide instruction and feedback to two dozen teenagers.
That author is still publishing, still on the best seller lists. My first book will be published in March 2022. It's not science fiction. It's non-fiction. It's not about something I 'knew' when I started the process. It's about something I wanted to know and understand more deeply.
I guess I still write primarily from my longings. . .
(I didn't mean for this to turn into a blog post of its own, but I appreciate your reflections and the prompt they gave me to revisit and reflect on my own experiences.