Most of my personal life has been a “need to know” basis when it comes to sharing. I am an open book for the most part, but when it comes to really personal details, you won’t know it unless I feel like I can trust you enough.
My experience with writing has taught me that it’s better if you write what you know. There’s a lot of stories I could potentially write, but I feel like it infringes too close on my personal life and if I write and publish, it’s like I’m standing naked in front of everyone. It’s kind of silly to feel that way, because I’m writing fiction and everything is always dramaticized in fiction, so people who don’t know me wouldn’t really know what was from my life, but the ones that do, would.
I’m trying to find the right balance to tell the story I want to tell, but also make sure that my life isn’t dragged into it and muddy the content. I tend to just write about characters that have no relation to me at all so I can just have an objective view on writing. Sometimes, I think that goes really well and other times I’ve gotten feedback where the main character isn’t either a) believable or b) likable.
My novella that I’m writing has been a process to find that balance. I’ve been working on it for over a year now. I really want to publish it as an e-book and possibly hard copy, so I’ll only be posting excerpts on this blog. It’s nearly finished, there are a few scenes I’m trying to work in. I’m pretty excited about this because I’ve never really written a novella before. It’s always been short story or “novelettes”.
This “write what you know” doesn’t just stop at fiction, it goes the same with my scriptwriting. But, in scriptwriting, I find myself starting to write more fantasy and supernatural scripts and than real life drama scripts. I like the aspect of creating a visual world that people have never seen before. We’ve seen so many hard dramas and what’s been going on around the world, sometimes just escaping from reality makes it easier. I don’t know why it’s easier for me to remain objective while writing scripts than writing fiction, but I do. I’ll write about how I find my ideas in another blog.
I’m hoping that this writing journey helps me grow and put away my fear of “writing what I know”. Once that fear goes away, I have a ton of stories just waiting to be told.
Thanks for reading!
-Emi