Creative licencing

Truth is one of those indefinable, fickle words. We can say it is honesty, but whose version of truth do we listen to? Different things in our lives affect us differently so we each react to situation in individual ways; it’s open to interpretation.

And so it seems with literature we can look into the life and soul of an author and still know nothing about their writing. 

Emily Dickinson wrote all of her poetry in the first person but we cannot read every single line as a personal truth of hers, we cannot understand to what degrees she was being honest with her own feeling and what was influencing her at the time.

 It’s unavoidable for writers to not project parts of themselves onto their writing, the same way an artist cannot hide themselves with their paintings.

Friedrich Nietzsche said “There are no facts, only interpretations.” The same applies to truths and so there is most definitely truth to the stories we tell of our lives, but we choose the truths.

As for fiction it is all a case of interpretation and endlessly trying to understand something that you will never find the answer for …. So basically living life.

Here is an Intervention of Emily Dickinson’s poem “My life had stood - a loaded gun” the way I interpret it:

“My life had stood – a loaded gun

But for his eyes to see

In corners –till a day

He saw me waiting there

The owner passed- identified

But it was he that

Carried me away”

Arrange and compose, your audience is waiting…..

I'm a Writer?

At university today we were all asked how we became Writers, Well until that point I wouldn't have classified myself as a Writer at all. I like to write and I one-day hope to be a Writer but what in fact would classify me as being a Writer? Getting published it seems is always a key factor, for as a society we see being a Writer as a profession.

Emily Dickinson had a mere twenty poems published during her lifetime out of her seventeen hundred written. So maybe that is the key to becoming a writer, we must all die! It seems today the best way to become published is to become a journalist where, unless you make a bloody big mistake, no one knows who you are, or you write a shockingly controversial novel about sex.

I started writing because I struggled a lot at school and a wise person once told me to keep a diary, it didn't matter what I wrote just as long as I practiced my English. I started to think about what else I could write, interesting bits of conversation, or something hilarious that I’d seen. Then I would imagine more exciting things than my mundane little town.

This I suppose is how I became a Writer. Although I still don’t think I will really call myself a Writer until there is a publication with my name on it but until then I will be a student of the pen, an aspiring writer. I do now believe that in fact anyone can be a writer whether a ten year old writing a story about her dog or a sixty year old telling his life story.

Rene Descartes said, “I think therefore I am” and so be it. Being a writer is a choice, a lifestyle choice as much as choosing a dress or a new house. To follow your dreams, or follow what you’re good at or just to follow a train of thought. Statistics say that most aspiring writers won’t make it. Well unless they develop amnesia and forget how to write it seems to me they have already made it.

I think I am a writer and so I am. I make the conscious decision to struggle through a penniless lonely existence living in a shoe box until that manuscript happens to fall at the right time onto the right desk, and crash! Bang! Wallop! My hopes and dreams are fulfilled.

But until that time, my shoe box will be filled with fairies and dragons and trees that grow upside down, cats that wear suits, never ending cupcakes and most importantly an endless supply of paper and ink.

Arrange and compose, You audience is waiting...