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Writing Excercises

This exercise from So You Want to Write is included in Now Write Non-Fiction: Memoirs, Journalism, and Creative Non-Fiction Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers, Sherry Ellis, editor, published by Penguin (USA).

On Achieving Distance – The Parallel Universe

Any fiction writer who has ever tried to write his or her own life story knows it is far more difficult to write a memoir than a novel. It would seem easy at the outset: you’ve lived the experience so the research is already done. You’ve interacted with the people so the characters will just begin speaking to you, as they did in real life. Descriptions will flow from your fingers to the keyboard. Why wouldn’t they, you’ve already been there. If memoir writing was that easy, however, my workshops wouldn’t be packed with people who have lived incredibly interesting lives but are stopped short when trying to write about themselves.

I sympathize with them. I’ve grappled with that nasty inner censor that folds it arms like a border guard and will not let you pass. I’ve attempted to satisfy its request for a passport, which is in reality the answer to the question, What makes you think your life is interesting enough to write about? I’ve stared bleary-eyed at my computer screen, waiting for a story that I’ve lived through once to make a repeat appearance on the page. Most days it doesn’t show up.

Other days the characters show up, all right, but what they have to say is not what you want to hear. It didn’t happen that way at all, they wail. Or, You’re not being fair to me. Or, You write one more word and I’ll sue! And they’re not the only voices in your head. Suddenly your parents and/or children show up: You did that? You should be ashamed of yourself! If you put that down on paper you’ll embarrass us all. There are often a whole of other voices up there, too, all shouting, Loser!

Hey. One of the reasons I teach this stuff is because I’ve been there, done that, heard the voices, fought them off…some days successfully, some days not. What I’ve learned to do is to distance myself. For one thing, I call what I write (and teach) personal narrative, not memoir, not autobiography, not non-fiction. What I aim for is emotional truth. If I feel the finished product adequately describes events as they actually occurred, I may then label it memoir. If I feel that there was a deviation from events that somewhat contradicted fact, I might label it a memoir-novel. (In my role as publisher of Leapfrog Press, I made this distinction with a book we published in which an author felt that her handling of the material of her life might hurt people that she loved, but that the events in the book were mostly true. We agreed to label the book a memoir-novel. The reviews were fantastic). If, as in my own life story, The Kitchen Man, I allowed my imagination to take command, rather than the strict mapping of chronological fact, I labeled the result an autobiographical novel. In all cases it was the emotional truth that was of primary importance, because I believe that what is of ultimate importance to a reader is a good read, and this is the direct result of the emotional impact of your story. If you have a written a good book, a gripping read, an experience that moves the reader, it doesn’t matter what label you give it. That’s a marketing decision. First you have to write the book.

To reach this emotional truth it is sometimes necessary to distance yourself from the experience. To tell that former lover you’re writing about: It’s not you, so shut up! To stand up to your mother (in your head, of course) and say, This is not my first sexual experience, it’s somebody else’s. Or to your cousins who insist that grandma was a lily white virgin before she met grandpa, the love of her life, Don’t be ridiculous, how can this be our family, the story takes place in Oahu in 1946. Much historical and speculative fiction—writings that take place in the past or the future—deal with events and situations that are emotionally true to a writer. After all, it is naïve to imagine that people in the past were free of the complications we suffer through today and overly optimistic to think that people in the future will have rid themselves of the most basic human emotions.

The exercise that follows is a little trick that I use when the material or the characters that I am writing about feel too emotionally close to allow me to tell the story.

The Parallel Universe

Think of an incident in your own life. It can be an argument, or an erotic experience, or your first music recital; some memorable incident. The best incidents for this exercise carry some emotional weight: happiness or misery, fear, nervousness, embarrassment. (If it's been an incident you've been reluctant to tackle in your writing, so much the better.)

You are going to write about that incident. You are the main character in that story. But . . . you are going to disguise things in a big way.

Here are some suggestions (choose one or more):

-- Write in the third person.

-- Pick a main character that is not you.

-- Change the place the incident occurred.

-- Change the time period (make it happen in the past or the future).

-- Change the sex of the character.

Naturally, you'll have to make adjustments. If your incident concerns a crush you had on the captain of the ice hockey team and you decide to set your piece in Barcelona instead of Minnesota, the object of your affections will also have to change to accommodate the new surroundings (maybe captain of the soccer team? maybe a matador?).

Your aim is to be true to your emotions and your version of the incident but to distance yourself from it, disguise it so that:

The average reader of the piece would not see you in it but feel what you felt and,