I Am My Words

Today’s guest is Grady Jane Woodfin, who just finished her BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment. She’s been published in several literary magazines such as Crab Fat and ThickJam, and her short story “Twizzlers,” was a 2015 Pushcart Prize nominee.  Today, she talks about why we should write about what we know.   Here are her words.

Writing is a lonely job.  I can talk story and characters and plot and themes and genres all day long, but when it comes down to it, it’s just me and a terrifying white, blank page with an annoying cursor that counts the seconds with its blinks.  But before I can confront that white, blank page, I have to face a different monster all together.

What do I write about?

My entire writing career, people have always told me, “Grady, write about what you know.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean write about what you know.”

“But what if I don’t know much of anything.”

“Then you probably shouldn’t be a writer.”

So, what do I know?  Well, I know some things.  You see, I am constantly wondering if anyone else in the world has ever felt the way I’m feeling.  That’s a huge part of what draws me into writing.  I’m convinced a lot of my writing is desperately trying to work things out in my own head.

I find myself crafting stories that have strong undertones of the struggles I face in every day life.  In my short story, Twizzlers, I focused on writing about things like loneliness, abandonment, family, and starting over.  These were vital for me to tell a good story because they were conflicts I’d experienced before.  I was battling my demons in my own stories.

So far, I find this to be true with other writers.  We all seem to be writing about what we know best, whether it’s loss or love, revenge or redemption.  I think we do it without thinking.  It’s our natural, default setting.  It’s almost guaranteed that if something is keeping a writer up at night, they’re going to express one way or another through their writing, whether it’s the A story plot or an obscure sub-plot that’s mentioned in half of a sentence on page 187 of the second draft.  We’re all writing about what we know because it’s familiar to us.

But there’s something horrifying that comes with admitting I’m really writing about my own experiences.  Writing about what I know makes me vulnerable.  As Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”  Writing is literally transferring myself onto a piece of paper and hoping that someone, somewhere is going to relate to the obstacles I’ve overcome… or maybe didn’t overcome.  There’s nothing separates the writer and the reader.  There is nothing on the paper but black and white truth.  Brutal and honest and messy truths.

I am my words.

That’s the scariest part.

Writing sounds like an awful labor of love.  I write because I exist.  I exist because I write.  So on and so forth.  The cycle continues.  However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

There’s a reason I write about what I know.  I write about what I know because what I know is real.  It’s conflict that I’ve encountered.  It’s problems that have haunted my nights and trickled into my days.

It is the realness of writing about what I know that makes my storytelling relatable.

When characters encounter a realistic problem the reader has also faced.  That’s the exact moment that makes all the vulnerability of writing payoff because something clicks, and somebody says, “Hey, I never knew that someone else in the world had felt that way before.  I thought I was the only one, and it’s nice to know that I’m not.”

Writing about what haunts me most, deep down in my gut may be alarming, but without that twinge of helplessness, writing wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding.

Always write about what you know because it’s those stories that mean the most.

 

JIM:    Grady Jane’s immediate plans are to move to LA and break into the television writing industry.  Here are some links to find out more about this young writer.

Her website/portfolio: http://www.gradyjanewoodfin.com/

 Twitter: https://twitter.com/GradyJWoodfin

 Tumblr: http://gradyjanewrites.tumblr.com/

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grady.woodfin