Writing and personal experiences (quote, stories)

[nightbird47]

I know I've said it before in a post, but a friend of mine passed on a phrase she heard in college. Writing is a kind of telepathy. We pass on our visions through words. And of course one of the things we pass on is how we see the world, as formed by the personal experiences we've lived. Another is by using those experiences to tell a story.

Right now, amid a bunch of things being edited and fixed from recovered files as a respite I started a story. It connected in some close ways, and its become very personal to me. I sit and find myself writing out memories so I can clarifly them enough to use them for Dan. Because Dan is seeing through my eyes.

Its been an amazing thing, but I'm finding that I can look at what was hard to deal with through his eyes and see more clearly than with my own. I've been reflecting on things a lot since this story started, and on the other end is a calm and understanding for me I didn't anticipate.

I know we all use them, but do most writers find this release as I find I am? I am not writing it straight from my life, but using the emotional carpet that came with the time and which has obsured it ever since. Now that it is clearing the things I could never allow to be dealt with are coming clearer, and there is a very highly charged story which might free up someone else.

I'm just wondering if this is an aberation or now, since usually I let the emotional undercurrent flow without so much work.

[Toxiclove]

Originally Posted by nightbird47

I know I've said it before in a post, but a friend of mine passed on a phrase she heard in college. Writing is a kind of telepathy. We pass on our visions through words. And of course one of the things we pass on is how we see the world, as formed by the personal experiences we've lived. Another is by using those experiences to tell a story.

Right now, amid a bunch of things being edited and fixed from recovered files as a respite I started a story. It connected in some close ways, and its become very personal to me. I sit and find myself writing out memories so I can clarifly them enough to use them for Dan. Because Dan is seeing through my eyes.

Its been an amazing thing, but I'm finding that I can look at what was hard to deal with through his eyes and see more clearly than with my own. I've been reflecting on things a lot since this story started, and on the other end is a calm and understanding for me I didn't anticipate.

I know we all use them, but do most writers find this release as I find I am? I am not writing it straight from my life, but using the emotional carpet that came with the time and which has obsured it ever since. Now that it is clearing the things I could never allow to be dealt with are coming clearer, and there is a very highly charged story which might free up someone else.

I'm just wondering if this is an aberation or now, since usually I let the emotional undercurrent flow without so much work.

I couldn't agree more.

I find so much release in writing. I write poetry and short stories, but mostly poetry. It's always personal. I do not know how to write any other way. It's mostly about expressing my pain, turmoil, or confusion in a healthy way. It keeps me from "drinking away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away (Modest Mouse)". We all experience pain and have to deal with it somehow if we want to live. Some do this through avoidance, some through drinking, some through therapy. I do it with a pen and a paper or a keyboard. Writing is my therapy.

[nightbird47]

Originally Posted by Toxiclove

I couldn't agree more.

I find so much release in writing. I write poetry and short stories, but mostly poetry. It's always personal. I do not know how to write any other way. It's mostly about expressing my pain, turmoil, or confusion in a healthy way. It keeps me from "drinking away the part of the day that I cannot sleep away (Modest Mouse)". We all experience pain and have to deal with it somehow if we want to live. Some do this through avoidance, some through drinking, some through therapy. I do it with a pen and a paper or a keyboard. Writing is my therapy.

I've done "therapy" but some of it I wouldn't let anyone into. I felt like my personal life had been invaded too much already. Writing and using experience has helped draw away a lot of the fears about letting it out of its cage. One of the things I wrote about for this is the process of slipping into survival mode, and how sometimes it can almost instantly happen. But I broke it down to the components and reading it over see that while I thought I had gotten past some of it, it reads like a description of how I still deal with things. I'm thinking of cleaning up the piece and using it as a blog or something that might help out someone else.

But we bleed emotion from our own lives whenever we write, even if we don't think we are. I lost a hard drive to a short, and the drive on that computer had written backups nothing else could read, so I am soooo lucky that most of my posted stuff was on a friends geocities site and she saved it before that went down. But as I'm capturing it off the screen and going through the stuff to reformat all of it, I can tell what was written before the shtf moments and what was written after. Before there is a raw, and powerful emotional charge to it that I can feel, and was commented on but I did not see where it was coming from. After, there is a strong sense of control, of muting, of being careful and all the things which still really define me. I think that is what we give in our writing, a sense of self which we do not always see. And that is what makes people want to read so it can be shared.