Is It Autobiographical?

5/8/2017

Years ago, hearing that I was writing fiction, a friend asked if it was autobiographical.

“Not exactly,” I said. “It’s about Gypsies in eastern Europe in the early 1400s.”

My friend laughed. “Guess not.”

In fact my narrative of a girl’s childhood with her big brother, her encounter with new environments, and her growth into womanhood was replete with autobiography. So is my current late medieval mystery, shaped by memories of sojourns in a predominantly male milieu and an expatriate community far from home.

How but through experience do we know the workings of the human heart? The incongruous behaviors that erupt out of fear, resentment, loneliness, or grief? The relationships of lovers, friends, and rivals? The smell of wet soil, the taste of salted fish, the sensation of wind on the face? Isn’t it all autobiographical?

2 Comments

Rhonda Peterson

5/8/2017 02:01:52 pm

Beautifully put, Sarah. The traditional advice to writers is to write what you know. Of course, other advice is to travel widely, meet people, experience new things, read widely, and observe, observe, observe! Doing these things expands "what you know."

Isn't there a place, as well, for increasing one's capacity to put yourself into someone else's shoes? You may remember an exercise we did years ago with a small group in which we were to imagine in concrete detail what our day and world would be like, starting with getting up in the morning, if we were the other sex. (The common understanding at that time was that gender was binary--male or female.) I was astonished at the difference in how I felt in my imagined day as a man, and in hearing similar comments from others in the group. I suppose that a fiction writer could work with this ability and strengthen it to get outside his/her own experience.

Sarah link

5/8/2017 03:55:24 pm

Points well taken, Rhonda. My Sept. 26 blog post, "Writing What You Know," took issue with that traditional advice and proposed, as you do, expanding what you know. One can know a lot at second hand. Recently I've consulted friends with relevant expertise to construct a horse theft and describe a childbirth gone wrong.

My awareness of autobiographical elements often pops up after the fact. I realize that my character's seemingly odd reactions to something come out of how I reacted to something parallel. When a critique partner said no one would laugh at an inappropriate moment or joke amid grief or fear, I thought oh, we must have different life experiences. When my character resents her father advising her that X is no place for a woman, then resents his advice all the more when he turns out to be right, I realize she may be illogical but it's the story of my dad and me around my choice of grad school.

Putting oneself in another's shoes is a great way to stretch. It might be helpful to check out our imaginings with others. I recall the workshop you mentioned. I wondered at the time if I would really feel more confident as a man or just imagined I would. The specific I recall most vividly was men describing their sensuous imagined experience of shower water steaming over their breasts and then the equally sensuous pulling on of pantyhose. I thought, wow, really? Few of my mornings are so sensuous and pulling on pantyhose, never.

Is It Autobiographical?

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