Write Your Own Life

When you become acutely, precisely aware of what’s going on around you, you can observe and then infuse real life and soul into character and scene.  We all have stories. It’s bringing them to life that can be the challenge.

Writers are often advised that, ‘the journey is the destination’, but actually the best piece of advice I ever received was from a fellow novelist who quoted me Sir Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell, just keep going!”

Here at Girlosophy, our mantra is that all plans need to be flexible in case of other plans.  In many respects, writing is exactly the same. You may not end up anywhere near where you thought you were heading, but you can cover a lot of miles while you’re lost. The upside is that nothing then, is ever truly a disaster. Something will come of it.

On any quest, there is normally some sort of goal involved (a Holy Grail if you will), however, if you can, it’s often wise when you begin to write to put aside all notions of achievement. Writing just for the thrill and freedom of it is one of the most intensely challenging, satisfying, and liberating things you can do.

Nothing can compare to the surprise of finding that which lies within you.

To be an artist of life it’s about taking the highs and the lows and viewing them all in a macro, big picture sense.  The breakup that brought you unstuck? It’s material for a novel. An event that you trained hard for? Wonderful for a character’s motivation. The travel journal you kept last holidays? A career in media beckons. No matter what you do it’s all about the search and the record. Life = Your material.

“But right now I just feel stagnant and a bit lost in my head. We’ll probably leave around June 10th with some cameras, journals, skateboards, sleeping bags, a few road maps and only two rules: no hotels and no cell phones.” (Jon Rose, from Towards Miles: Observations of an American Passage)

Writing is a discipline and it requires as much from us. It takes diligence to be consistent. In order to prepare to write or to get something positive from the process, you need to bring some sort of effort to the task. As it is well known, even in professional sport, perseverance beats talent every day.

And so, like most things in life, writing or keeping a journal is best done fairly regularly to gain the most from it. In any case, keeping track of your tracks, so to speak, is just a great thing to do. You can check out what you were doing ages after and it will all come flooding back to you. Who cares if what you wrote down has crossed out lines and the odd spelling mistake? The energy will still be there, fresh on the page, the same as the day you wrote it, although the meaning to you may well have changed. It’s a memory and it’s a story and, best of all, it’s all yours.

Photographer: Anthea Paul