In college, I took a very enjoyable playwriting course. I liked the format and how you can describe in detail what the whole scene looks like. I would write some crazy plays. Plays about murder and drugs and stuff I never experienced before. But it was a struggle.
My characters were empty…because I didn’t know them. The places had holes and I confused the hell out of my professor when she had to read them. So she gave me a bit of advice.
She told me to write what I know, experiences in my own life. I remember exactly how she said, “Tell your story, because it’s your own and noone can tell it better than yourself because you were there.” Automatically, I dismissed it. Write what I know? But my life is boring and who would want to read or feel a story about that? There was no crazy drama or huge event that was so interesting anybody could care…so I thought. So I kept on with my crazy stories.
It would take me almost ten years later to finally understand where she was coming from. She was…so right.
Now that I have been telling my own stories from my heart…my characters make sense, the setting is real and I have never loved writing more in my whole life than as much as I do now.
Thank god for teachers. Even if the lesson isn’t learned till years later…eventually we get it.
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