I just started going to a writers' workshop at the American Library here in Paris. It's led by an expat writer who has a few fairly successful autobiographical fiction books. To join the workshop, we have to have 3 chapters of a novel completed. We meet once a month for a year until the novel is finished. The one restriction is that our novels must be based on our own lives and that they are like mémoires if I understand the assignment correctly.
I struggle with this restriction because I find life to be grim. In writing, I seek something beautiful and meaningful or even escapist. By the way, that's also why I take drugs every day. It's the reason I prefer drugs that make dreams more frequent and vivid and hate pschedelics that strip away ones fantasies and throw reality in your face. So how do I satisfy the restriction of the workshop (writing about ugly, hard reality) while seeking beauty or escape? Other people will read my chapters and will expect me to follow this restriction. Somebody suggested doing humor (I assume like John Irving or the guy who wrote 'even cowgirls get the blues' - Tom Robbins) but I don't do humor. Not because I don't want to but because I can't. Humor takes a special talent that you are born with. It probably cannot be learned.
The subject of the workshop the other day was character development. The workshop leader lifts most of her characters from her own family. She is very worried that they will recognize themselves and become angry. In fact, she has alienated a few family members when they saw themselves in the characters in her first novel. To avoid this, she suggests changing enough of the details so they will never be sure it is really them.
This won't be a problem fro me because I'm the only one in my family who can read. I taught myself to do it when I was four or so.
And finally, I've always had Spell Check for the last 10 years. Now I come here and use these French computers, and French Spell Check only works for French Words. I surprise myself by how many English words I have to look up. It's too much trouble to go into all of the settings - user profile, browser, word processor and constantly switch the spell check between french and english.
I struggle with this restriction because I find life to be grim. In writing, I seek something beautiful and meaningful or even escapist. By the way, that's also why I take drugs every day. It's the reason I prefer drugs that make dreams more frequent and vivid and hate pschedelics that strip away ones fantasies and throw reality in your face. So how do I satisfy the restriction of the workshop (writing about ugly, hard reality) while seeking beauty or escape? Other people will read my chapters and will expect me to follow this restriction. Somebody suggested doing humor (I assume like John Irving or the guy who wrote 'even cowgirls get the blues' - Tom Robbins) but I don't do humor. Not because I don't want to but because I can't. Humor takes a special talent that you are born with. It probably cannot be learned.
The subject of the workshop the other day was character development. The workshop leader lifts most of her characters from her own family. She is very worried that they will recognize themselves and become angry. In fact, she has alienated a few family members when they saw themselves in the characters in her first novel. To avoid this, she suggests changing enough of the details so they will never be sure it is really them.
This won't be a problem fro me because I'm the only one in my family who can read. I taught myself to do it when I was four or so.
And finally, I've always had Spell Check for the last 10 years. Now I come here and use these French computers, and French Spell Check only works for French Words. I surprise myself by how many English words I have to look up. It's too much trouble to go into all of the settings - user profile, browser, word processor and constantly switch the spell check between french and english.
