Writing about yourself: both terrifying and rewarding

The odyssey goes on. It’s not easy to find the time to write, stream yourself doing it and everything, but, for now, everything seems to be going fine.

Every time I’m about to start the stream, I feel some butterflies in my stomach and ask myself if I should really do it. Not just the stream, but the whole idea surrounding the book. It’s scary but I keep going.

And, at least for now, I’m glad I’m doing it, I’m glad that every time I feel like giving up, I have this amazing husband telling me not to and I’m glad I’ve been listening to him.

This whole experience was about helping other Aspie women and parents that might be dealing with such a problem with their kids and might be scared and lost, but it has also helped me out quite a bit. Talking about it, getting me to stop hiding was one of the best things I could’ve ever done. It brought some blogs about the subject, some people on Twitter and basically a whole new world into my life. Into the spotlight, so to say.

So many things are becoming clearer as I keep talking with other Aspies and reading about their experiences and struggles, as well as sharing my own. It feels great.

Despite the incredibly little amount of time I have in which to write, the book keeps evolving and my enthusiasm about it does not dwindle.

Thank you. All of you!

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Writing is a work of art. It takes time and perseverance

When you want to draw a face, you need to learn how to draw an eye first. Writing uses the same logic. You can’t write a book if you don’t know how to write a chapter, or even a simple scene… You need to get to know and understand every single piece composing the story, so you can write more complex plots and interesting intrigues.

As with any other kind of art, you need to practice in order to improve your work. Write! Just write, every little chance you get, at least a little every day. Learn how to put down on paper those wonderful ideas and images living within your mind.

When an idea come to your head you must write it down on paper. Look at it later and write something. It doesn’t need to be an epic novel, it can just be a short story or even a simple scene. Doesn’t matter what it will become, or whether it’ll become something more that a few sentences. Practice, practice and then practice some more…

Not even the best pieces of art can please everyone

When you make a decision about your writing, you’re also making a decision regarding your audience. When you chose a particular genre, you delimit the people who might want to read your story.

That’s normal and usually desirable, but you need to know how to deal with it. You need to know the kind of audience who might be interested in your work, how to reach them and make them want to keep reading your stories.

However, keep in mind, there’s absolutely no story that can please 100% of the readers (even inside one specific genre). Not even the great masterpieces of world literature can make it, so there’s just one person that should always love your work in order to keep making it better and better: yourself.

Art doesn’t need to equate to ‘hard to understand’

Many people assume that the harder an art work is to understand, the better that work is. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. A good story should have an impact on your readers, make them happy or sad, surprised, fascinated. It should provoke emotions or make them think about it.

It’s hard to be touched by something you don’t understand, isn’t it? So, use your beautiful words and majestic sentences with good judgment and try to put yourself in your reader’s shoes. Remember that they have different experiences from you and try to imagine how other people would interpret what you just wrote.

Invite the reader to elaborate on some parts of the scene that he or she is reading. Provide them with some details and deprive them of some others, so each reader is allowed to see the scene according to his/her experiences. Give descriptions that provide images in his or her mind. Help your readers visualize the same things you had to visualize when you were writing your work. That’ll get you their attention!

The characters and myself

A writer often starts writing about himself or his experiences. Our first characters are usually some kind of reflection of ourselves… what we are, what we wanted to be, what we hate and love about ourselves.

This is normal, expected and actually good practice. It’s important for you to know yourself and explore your own personality, since, when you create a character, you need to explore it and it would be harder if you’ve never done that before. The words, descriptions and everything else you’ll craft around these first characters are kind of who you are, which makes them special.

However, this is just the beginning, and eventually, it comes time to evolve and create something else entirely. You do not want every single character to become a different version of yourself, do you? So, when you finally reach this point, what should you do?

It’s never easy, no matter the circumstances, to see something from other people’s point of view. However, as a writer, this is your job, so you need work at it, and practice it a lot. Empathy is the key here.

So, start freeing your mind from all of your beliefs and prejudices and look at your story from different points of view. Try to write the same scene, narrating it with the different voices of the several characters that take part in it. They surely have different thoughts and feelings and you must write the same scene according to these differences. Is it hard? It very well might be, at first.

Let’s see, there are several ways to accomplish this. Even in real life, you can train this ability with and on other people who cross your way. Try to understand and perceive conflict, disagreements or debates from several of the different perspectives. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who might disagree with you. Why? What’s his or her point of view? Try to understand, empathize with that person and his or her ideas and you’ll realize that you can truly start to understand what he or she is thinking.

Besides, you can’t flood your readers with extensive and exhaustive descriptions, you need to be a bit more subtle and the best way to learn how to achieve this is by actually observing other people and their behavior. People don’t usually lend themselves to be read very easily. You actually need to read in between the lines and realize what they are really thinking to start figuring out who they really are. And, in the end, what helps you get to know that? What was the sign that elucidated you? Keep at it and you will soon find out what stands out.

That’s the one thing you need, to find that something that’ll help you read people, better see a story from different angles and be able to make and write more interesting and realistic characters.