Writing in the Margins
Welcome to week three of Patchwork!
This week, we’re focusing explicitly and specifically on autobiography.
As always, you can write your own autobiography, or the autobiography of a character. Autobiographical tools are useful for fiction and non-fiction writers, because autobiography tells stories that explore both the small details and broad themes of lives. Mining our own lives (or the lives of our characters) for story material can be terrifying and rewarding. Who are we? And why are we who we are?
A focus on biographical details, even if the backstory doesn’t make it into a final work of fiction, can add depth and resonance to a character. Telling these stories in the character’s own voice can be useful for learning what that voice is, how it works in different settings, how the character talks about their own life.
For those of us who write creative non-fiction, intentionally engaging with autobiography can give us permission to tell our own stories and to view those stories as worthwhile. Sometimes we forget how powerful our own voices can be, and how beautiful our own stories are.
There are two ways to engage with this set of prompts.
First, you could choose to write immediately after watching or reading the inspiration piece. In this case, you might find that your work takes on the cadence, rhythms or tones of what you’ve just watched or read. This can be very valuable, and can give you new ways of working with stories and words. However, it can also be unsettling, or feel inauthentic.
Although I do highly recommend trying out these different voices, you may also want to give yourself some time between the inspiration piece and your own writing, either to play around with the feel of the new rhythms in your mind before setting them to paper, or to give enough distance that your own voice can come back.
It’s important to note that you may not find your writing voice changed by the inspiration pieces, even if you write immediately after them, and that’s also completely normal! You may also hate these pieces, or find that they don’t resonate with you or speak to you, and that’s also okay and totally normal. One reason I don’t focus on inspiration prompts is because it’s impossible to find complete works that resonate with every writer. However, listening to how someone else uses the details of their own life in their writing can be valuable for helping us develop our own toolkits as writers.
So, the first prompt. Andrea/Andrew Gibson is my favourite spoken word poet. They do an amazing job of using autobiographical detail to tell evocative stories that talk about larger issues. Watch their spoken word piece, “Letter To A Playground Bully from Andrea (age 8).” (And then, if you’re like me, watch at least another hour of their other spoken word performances because they are amazing.)
When you’re ready to write, take a moment to stretch, set your timer for fifteen minutes, and write a letter from yourself at age 8. This letter can be to whoever you would like, including your future self. Find your 8 year-old voice, and write.
This second spoken word/musical piece by Shanelle Gabriel, called “Crushing Hard,” focuses on a specific theme and follows it through many years. This can be a very powerful tool for autobiography, and can sometimes help us find themes in our lives that we weren’t previously aware of.
When you’re ready to write, stretch something different, take a sip of water or tea, set your timer, and write about a recurring theme in your life. You could write about crushes at different ages, or any other recurring experience or theme. Choosing a seemingly random theme (going for ice cream, walking the dog, raking leaves) can sometimes lead us to surprising and rewarding stories.
The last prompt is a written inspiration piece. Anne Theriault writes The Belle Jar blog and it is one of the most beautifully-written and powerful blogs that I regularly read. Her most recent is called “How to be a Grownup” and is about her own anxieties and doubts about herself as a “grownup.” What I like about this post is how she moves smoothly between ideas, always coming back to the idea of being a grownup and anchoring her writing in the short transitional sentences that mark movements between themes, and the rhetorical questions that allow her to make her doubts and insecurities so clear. Her vulnerability in this piece really resonated with me.
When you are ready to write, take a deep breath, pay attention to how your body feels and stretch if you need to, get comfortable, set your timer for a bit longer than usual, and write about the impact of early expectations on your current sense of self. Use Anne’s strategies of short, anchoring sentences and rhetorical questions to help you explore whatever it is that these expectations were about – whether it’s being a grownup, or one of the infinite number of other things that become invested with our early expectations of ourselves, or the expectations that others have for us.
Let me know how these prompts worked for you, and what you thought of the inspiration pieces.
Happy writing!
