Feel Like You Don’t Have Enough Life Experience As A Writer? — You Are Not Digging Deep Enough Into Your Past.
In the well of your past lies the ink for your creative pen.
Upcoming episode on Becoming A Writer podcast this Saturday — we are going to talk about how having fun is the key to a satisfying writing session.
In the well of your past lies the ink for your creative pen.
- Stephen King
In late 2022, I took part in a cohort-based writing course called Ship 30 for 30. The goal of the course was to write 30 short essays (atomic essays, as they would call them) in 30 days and do so publicly.
But before we could tackle that, the coaches went through some limiting beliefs and obstacles we have as writers that make it hard for us to write — one of them is not having enough ideas to write about.
Their solution to this problem? Ask yourself: What are all of the problems I’ve solved and topics I have learned about in the last two years?
That question was too broad and vague for me. So I modified it to — What have I learned as a writer in the last two years?
What I thought would be a quick, 30-minute brainstorming session turned into a full day of note cards spewed all over my room and me sitting among them, feverishly writing notes. I had enough ideas to last me more than a year if I wrote one of them every other day. (I don’t believe in good ideas and bad ideas. If a point struck you that means it’s worthy of investigation. You may not need to write every idea of yours, but it will definitely lead you to the next, better idea.)
That day in 2022 was a turning point in my writing journey because I opened the floodgates to my idea generation vault. Now, everywhere I look, every time I journal, every time I interact with life (conversation with a friend, out on a long drive, watching a movie), ideas automatically drop into my (first, subconscious, then conscious) lap.
This activity broke me free from my limiting belief that I don’t have even life experience to validate my writing.
I realised that the “life experience” I see everyone has… I will never have enough of that. And that’s because I was comparing myself with people who are older than me, who have different goals than me. But just because I don’t have the life experience they have doesn’t me I don’t have my own life experiences. At the time of taking part in the course, I had made 26 laps around the sun, and it would have been catastrophic if I hadn’t picked up lessons and memories along the way.
As I dug into my life, looking for incidents, interactions, quotes, and realisations that have made me the writer and human I was at that moment, my past turned into a treasure chest for all my writing needs. Now, I never run out of ideas to write!
How is your past a useful writing resource?
Being able to draw inspiration from real-life experiences. No matter how long you have been going around the sun, you have had a variety of life experiences that can provide you with material to write about. Or you may have an experience you wish you had in your life and can now create it in your writing. Another way of seeing this is you have seen someone else go through a life experience that you can now use as your writing base. Life is full of ideas and inspiration; shift the way you see life, and you’ll find them.
Creating emotional resonance. This works for both fiction and non-fiction writing. When you use an example from your past to explain your point and make the readers understand you from their heart, you hit the bull’s eye. Each one of us knows much courage is required to share a personal — most of the time, vulnerable — story. So when you do share a personal story with your readers, they feel and relate to it on a deeper level.
Personal exploration, healing, and development. While being writers, we sometimes forget that we are humans as well. We have had past heartbreaks, which ache us every now and then. Using your past as a resource for your writing indirectly makes you analyse, process, and understand it from a third-person view. This inevitably leads to better understanding yourself, healing past pains, and moving on and becoming a better human.
A chance to rewrite your past and become your future. However your past was, you can choose to make it go in a different direction by writing about it. As a child, I felt abandoned, and this feeling carried on till my mid-twenties. Now, as I kept using my past as my resource for writing and therefore seeing it from different angles than the one I personally experienced, I am glad that I was left on my own back then. That was my training to become a writer. Have I had been the social bug I wished I was, I wouldn’t have been the writer I am today. I was unconscious about the process, but now that I understand this, I am consciously trying to create an environment where my writer self can thrive. If I had been stuck crying and cribbing about my being-on-my-own childhood and teenage, I would have still been crying and cribbing about it. But now I am rewriting it and using it in my favour.
Tools to use to dig into your past.
Journal. Regularly journaling my thoughts, feelings, and what’s going on in my life at the moment over time creates a Mary Poppins carpet bag of endless adventures. I regularly read my journals and find nuggets of thoughts that could be delved deeper in an essay or tweaked and used as dialogue for one of my characters.
Dream journal. This is another form of journaling that comes in very handy in my writing. Either the dreams themselves will present me with a scene for my stories, or, over time, I will be able to mix and match some of my dreams and turn them into something completely new. One time, I had a dream of an old but very dashing-looking man paying me a visit at my childhood home. When I retold the dream to my mother and described the man, she gasped. It turns out the old man was my great-grandfather (my mother’s maternal grandfather with whom she was very close). Of course, this knowledge personally got me all fired up, but as a writer, too, I got a new character inspiration.
Interview your family and friends. This is a fun activity to do with your loved ones. Ask questions to anyone who has seen you grow up — your parents, siblings, neighbours, friends, teachers, local grocery shop owner, anyone. Ask them how you were as a child. Any funny incidents you did. Any funny habits you had. Any incidents where you, unknowingly and innocently, surprised them. Add all this information to your idea bank. They will either become useful one day as a piece of writing or will help support your work in some form.
Keep a record of your life. You can go as detailed or simple with this activity. Just write a sentence or a page about what went on in your past month. I keep a note of important events, milestones, starting or finishing a project, lightbulb moments, surprises, and setbacks. Over time, I am able to connect the dots as to how my life is unfolding. This becomes the future inspiration for my writing.
Revisit your favourites. This could be done physically or mentally. Go back in time and experience your favourite food. Or your favourite game. Or your favourite time of the day. Or your favourite place. As children, we are new to the world and, therefore, have detailed and deep sensory memories of that time. Use that to sensory image and feel to breathe life into your present writing.
Revisit old memories. Again, physically or mentally. Go back in time and remember your favourite place. Or the first time you did a backflip and landed on your feet. Or the excitement and preparation of Christmas. Or the time you fell from the swing and, as if in a cartoon, it swung back and hit you on your forehead. (I still have the mark dead centre of my forehead.) Even revisit the not-so-happy memories but with caution, gentleness and kindness. They all have contributed to the person you are today; therefore, they are also highly useful in the writer you want to become.
