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| Claude Monet's Painting Impression, Sunrise |
.....as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E. Hughes
I recently enjoyed watching a July 2010 TED Talks featuring Elif Shafak, a prominent, female Turkish author. Although she has published books in her native language and has become Turkey's best selling female writer, she has written numerous books in English and is best known for infusing her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. Wikipedia says, "Critics have named her as 'one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'."
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| Elif Shafak |
Many of her brilliant ideas concerning her life's career as a writer and storyteller extraordinaire, were discussed in her TED Talks, however, a specific notion that has become one of the guiding beliefs behind her writing is based upon a famous quote, "Write
what you know.....," often attributed to Ernest Hemingway. Ms. Shafak clearly disputes the 'literal' meaning behind this concept and, perhaps, (this is exactly why Hemingway used it in the first place).
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| Bret Anthony Johnston |
Embracing this belief about a story, Ms. Shafak, as do many other storytellers, believes in the notion of 'Writing what you feel.....' as being far more acceptable, less controlled and less rigid with regards to fiction writing.
We have to ask the question, did Diana Gabaldon actually plunge into a vortex and time-travel back into the Scottish Highlands of 1743 in order to write her best selling novel, Outlander? Most likely, not.....
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| Allan Gurganus |
In essence, what a fiction writer does is formulate ideas based upon what he or she knows, loves, has experienced already in life....and then, they MUST take a giant leap of faith to rise above what is known, enter the stratosphere located far beyond all personal restrictions, out of their comfort zones, and create experiences based upon these feelings. A good novel hooks us, the reader, while we are traversing the 'ground floor'...... A great novel can take us all the way up to the 'penthouse' apartment while harboring our desire of never wishing to leave. The steps that encourage us to climb to the very top are lined by elements of the writer's life....details that illuminate the writer's imagination and enable him to gain confidence and curiosity about his own story development and pull him up, level by level, creating a brand new world that is more real than anything ever experienced before! And then, upon completion, it is passed-on to the reader to interpret, explain and enjoy in his own personal style, with his own individual reactions and experiences.
Have you ever completed an amazing fiction novel only to find there is nobody else you can talk with about it? We love to share, especially something that awakens our senses and plays with our emotions as much as a 'good book' does. Ah! Props to the birth of reading groups and book clubs, as well as to their members who take, seriously, the intentions of each and every author's work they dissect....bisect and discuss! You may not always like or agree with an author but.....all the more reason to have an opportunity to talk about it.
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| Young Ernest Hemingway |
In this day and age of social media, more and more author's are making themselves available to these groups via computer programs such as Skype and FaceTime....entering the personal space and lives of readers anywhere and everywhere. Authors understand that by sharing their own reasons behind composing their novel and sharing these ideas with their fans and interested readers, they are getting valuable information across to others in a timely and intimate manner. Any author will tell you....after a fiction novel is officially published and distributed among the general public, it is not their 'baby' anymore in the sense that we, the readers, claim each sentence for ourselves, ravenously devouring each word and leaving few crumbs to be swept away afterwards. Voila!
Write what you know.....
Writing fiction is a true art form where the author begins the story with a stretched canvas (familiar ideas) accompanied by an array of colorful paint (medium used to expand on these ideas) and, a vision of what the future will or could be like.
Write what you feel.....
The author's goal is not to duplicate an experience, but to create a work of art that is an experience in itself. By taking the raw materials above and creatively layering each color upon the canvas in a productive and stimulating pattern.....fiction serves-up a powerful visualization in the same way that these components assisted in Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise.
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| Impressionist Artist Claude Monet |
Hemingway's quote, "Write what you know...." May have, ironically, been his argument all along. In Bret Anthony Johnston's The Atlantic essay entitled, Don't Write What You Know, he says, "The very act of committing an experience to the page is necessarily an act of reduction, and regardless of craft or skill, vision or voice, the result is a story beholden to and inevitably eclipsed by source material." If this is true, then it is essential for a fiction writer to go up, up and far beyond the level of his source material if he is to expect a positive reaction from his readers.
With
only my greatest respect for the best of intentions of all the authors I have
mentioned above, as well as for TED Talks for helping to bring the 'souls' of
many talented individuals into the light for all to see, I leave you with this
quote by Ernest Hemingway:
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Copyright © 2014 By Jacqueline E. Hughes
All rights reserved
