I didn’t attend the 2011 Fall Conference in Asheville sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network but I kept this description of one of the master classes: “If You’re Afraid to Write About It, You Probably Should Write About It”
Often a writer’s breakthrough comes when he finally faces up to material he’s been avoiding. Maybe it’s too personal or too painful or maybe he assumes it just wouldn’t interest anyone else. Whatever the reason, we writers often overlook our own obvious strengths, dismissing the very things that are central to us. Consequently, we write around the edges of our lives or our characters’ lives, so that our stories are pale imitations of what they could be. They may be well-written, they may even be entertaining, but they lack heart. As a writing teacher, I spend a good bit of time helping students recognize and appreciate their own writerly landscapes. When a writer makes the shift to writing about a world he knows, embodied with places and characters that matter to him, the writing almost always comes alive.
I’m currently writing about making home visits to three men that shared the same life situation. They all had terminal cancer. I visited the men on the same day because of their geographical proximity. With little experience in working with dying patients at the time, I found the visits depressing. While there are many completed chapters in my book, I had ignored this trio up to now. What is it about these men that disturb me?
What do you avoid writing about?
Reblogged this on Nursing Stories and commented:
How serendipitous is this? I wrote this post back on April 15, 2012 about how I hesitated to include into my memoir, Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers, a story of three men who had cancer and lived near each other.
Their stories didn’t make the cut, after all, because I had narrowed down the scope of the book to include just the time I spent at the clinic. I put their stories on the shelf and, now, I want to write about them in my new book, which is going to be about making home visits.
Truth be told, I have been successfully avoiding writing the manuscript. I’m not sure why.
I plan to meet with my mentor and good friend after the holidays to help me explore what I’m
afraid of.
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This is a timely reminder for me, because just this past week, I’ve decided to write about my grandmother, who journeyed from Russia in 1920 with her 2 little boys and a teen-aged niece to make a new home in America. I don’t know much of her story, just things around the edges, but her story deserves to be told, even if I have to fill in a lot through research.
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Good luck with this new direction– and have fun.
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Very good advice and justification to get brave. Thank you for posting.
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Certainly not an uncommon problem, isn’t it?
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