Personal Issues and Writing Exercises
I learned a long time ago that I need to examine my personal issues through writing.In my younger years it was through wildly passionate letters full of emotional outbursts. To one correspondent in particular, I’d often begin this way:
“I don’t really know what I think about this situation, so I’m going to write you a letter spelling it out with the hopes I’ll know what I to do by the end.”
Away my fingers first wrote, and then typed, multi-paged letters.
It usually worked.
(But pity the poor correspondent on the other end expecting a cheerful tale of a fun-filled life!)
The same thing, of course, happens while writing a novel.
A counselor I know was fascinated to learn I was writing a novel. “Tell me the story,” she said.
I was wary. “You know, this manuscript is going really well. I’m not sure I want you to hear the story. You might point out things I don’t recognize.”
“Just tell me until you feel uncomfortable. We can stop at any point.”
I told her the story.
She liked it.
She then told me who all the characters really were.
Dumbfounded, I stared at her.
My brain raced.
Good heavens! She was right.
While on one level, I had been conscious I was working out some issues–money mostly–she saw right through to the fundamentals: the emotional and family issues I was dissecting.
Her words were gentle. “How do you want your story to turn out?”
I didn’t even have to think about it. “Happily.”
(Unhappily, this exercise put me off finishing the novel for a good six months. However, the novel and my personal issues, did have a happy ending!)
What’s really going on with your story?
Since that particular novel writing experience, I’ve been more conscious of what the underlying stories of my life have been to the novels I’ve worked on. I knew Getting to Theo’s Wedding was explaining my financial quirkiness to my family. I know Bringing My Baby Back Home is about missing my husband and a poor choice made when a baby was offered to me for adoption.
Waking Dreams of Hope is about coming to terms with motherhood over a graduate degree. The Reflection Ark grapples with an almost Greek-tragedy type question: how to resolve the high price you may pay to get the desires of your heart?
Transcriptions explored grief, money, bitterness and the effect of music to change everything.
In most of these cases, I only gradually came to understand the personal issues pushing the wordsmithing.
Eventually, I set all those novels aside and wrote a spiritual memoir, which was far healthier.
(The memoir also allowed me to see how God had been busy in my life while I thought I was doing something else!)
Curiously, the three novellas and one novel I’ve had published did not spring from personal issues.
The Dogtrot Christmas and An Inconvenient Gamble incorporated elements of my family history (including my great-great-grandfather and my great-great-great-grandfather as characters). Bridging Two Hearts sprang from a friend’s fear of bridges and what she did about it.
The Gold Rush Christmas came out of a trip to Alaska 22 years ago.
Or did it?
When I reread the book in published form, I saw something else.
A brother and a sister.
Could it be?
Well, what would you do if your brother asked you?
Does writing down your thoughts help you make sense of personal issues? Click to Tweet
Have you ever been surprised by what you’ve seen about your life in your own writing?
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