Why We Share

I recently posted an article on my personal blog titled Don't Wait concerning the importance of early testing and detection when it comes to colon cancer. I received quite a bit of public and private feedback which led to some soul searching on my part. I'm sure the answer to this question is different for each of us, but let's talk about it for a bit. Let's talk about why we share our stories, our lives, our dreams our thoughts, our views, and our opinions through our writing. What's the motivation behind all the sharing?

Whether sharing through a blog, a poetry reading, a memoir, a contest submission, etc... (and the list is quite lengthy), there are those of us who use our writing to share things with others each and every single day. We all travel different paths, live in different places, and have our own unique stories to tell. I'm hoping you'll leave a comment on this post telling me your motivation and reason for sharing, because I'm genuinely curious. I think sometimes people's perception of why we share is completely the opposite of our reality.

They think we do it to stand in the spotlight.
Here's our reality: Even as a little girl, I wanted to share my stories. Our neighborhood group put together a newspaper that we distributed for free to anyone who wanted a copy. Keep in mind this was well before computers, and each edition was hand written by a group of elementary school students. Our motivation was never to make money or become famous and I guess we didn't stop to think "no one is going to be interested in reading this, so why bother?". I think most of us share with the intention of helping others - we hope that our pain, our struggle, and our laughter is going to positively impact others.

They think we do it for the money.
In reality, most authors don't make a lot of money. Most write during their free moments and still have another job to pay the bills. We write because we cannot imagine life without writing - just like most people can't live without air, we cannot live without words.

What are some other reasons people think you share your passion for writing? Is that perception accurate? What's your real motivation?

I love being engaged in conversation about my writing and hope it will inspire others to share their stories. Everyone is a teacher and we can learn and grow through their stories and experiences. No matter what your motivation or what people may think motivates you - just keep writing and please keep sharing!

Hugs,
~Crystal

Crystal is a secretary, council secretary, financial secretary, and musician at her church, birth mother, Auntie, babywearing mama, business owner, active journaler, writer and blogger, Blog Tour Manager with WOW! Women on Writing, Press Corp teammate for the DairyGirl Network, Unicorn Mom Ambassador, as well as a dairy farmer. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their five youngest children, two dogs, four little piggies, a handful of cats and kittens, horses Darlin' and Joker, and over 250 Holsteins.

You can find Crystal milking cows and riding unicorns (not at the same time), taking the ordinary and giving it a little extra (making it extraordinary), blogging and reviewing books here, and at her personal blog - Crystal is dedicated to turning life's lemons into lemonade!

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2 comments memoir, personal story, real life writing, why we share, why we write, writing about life

Friday Speak Out!: Why Am I Writing This?!”

by Jane Petreycik

Why do we write? Really? Why? That might be one of the more compelling questions of the century, if you ask me. For every writer, the answer is different, but also possibly the same.

A little over a year ago, an individual walked right out of my life, and a gazillion other people’s lives, never to return. I was devastated. It was like he had died. Okay, so he did recently reappear for about an hour, ironically for a funeral he was obligated to attend, but now he’s gone for good. And I was heartbroken all over again.

I consider myself mostly a fantasy writer. However, I am driven to write a faith-based screenplay inspired by this. Naturally, the story is changed up, a lot, but not the emotion behind it. But why am I even writing it? Maybe because it’s cathartic in a way. Maybe I can take the sadness and pain and transform them into a beloved Oscar-winning screenplay (sorry, I diverted to fantasy writing here). Or maybe it’s to get ideas and stuff out of my head and on the page, where they belong. While my character’s story isn’t exactly my story, while what happens in my script won’t be exactly what happened to me, I can grab snippets from life to make the script “real”. And so this fantasy writer is venturing into this new territory.

Again I ask – Why do we write? Why do we do this to ourselves? I don’t have to write this piece. I could write a nice little fairy tale adaptation and be fine. But I wouldn’t be satisfied. I’ve had so many perfectly good ideas that I’ve ended up putting aside, because they weren’t doing anything for me at the time. But this idea just isn’t going away.

So, I think we write ultimately because we have a story to tell. I have a story to tell. Writing this might be stepping way outside of my comfort zone, but I’m still delving into these uncharted waters. Doubtless we’ve all been told by someone to “write what you know”. Amen to that. I still might write that fairy tale adaptation someday, but at the present moment, I’m sticking with what I know.

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Jane Petreycik is currently a freelancer. Her first screenplay placed Runner Up in the Acclaim Scripts screenplay competition and was an Official Finalist in the New York Screenplay Contest. She is now working on another script.
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Would you like to participate in Friday "Speak Out!"? Email your short posts (under 500 words) about women and writing to: marcia[at]wow-womenonwriting[dot]com for consideration. We look forward to hearing from you!
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5 comments catharsis, fantasy, Friday Speak Out, Jane Petreycik, story to tell, why we write, write what you know, writing idea

Story: Power and Limitations

I recently watched Sisonke Msimang’s TED talk on the powers and limitations of story. As writers, we often talk about how stories have power. You’ve heard it. Kids who read fiction have higher levels of empathy than kids who don’t.

But limitations? That not something we discuss. Msimang made some powerful points.

Strength 1. Stories bring people together. At a certain level they create solidarity.

Limitation 1. This solidarity is usually an illusion. When you read about someone overcoming poverty or escaping her abuser, you have that fuzzy feel-good moment. Ahhhh, she made it. But unless you do something with this feeling, it’s too elusive to be solidarity.

Strength 2. Stories make us care about people we like. Sounds a lot like Strength #1, doesn’t it? The difference becomes clear in the limitation.

Limitation 2. We are less likely to care about someone who isn’t likeable. That’s why anti-heroes and unreliable narrators are hard to pull off. It is incredibly difficult to bridge the gap between readers and angry, outspoken narrators. This is a huge problem because, as Msimang points out, it is often the story that makes us squirm that we most need to hear.

Strength 3. Stories help us connect at the personal level, but …

Limitation 3. It is remarkably hard for people to see the connection between the personal woe and the societal problem.

Clearly, Msimang was talking to us as readers and her message was clear. Don’t think reading is enough. Don’t shy away from ugly stories. Think about the larger causes of individual hardships.

There are several things that we can take away from this as writers. First of all, we have to be willing to tell the hard stories and help our readers make uncomfortable connections. It is easy to say that poor children fail because they go to bad schools. In Hillbilly Elegy, author J.D. Vance makes it clear that a tumultuous home life kept him from getting all that he could out of school. I can only imagine how hard this memoir was to write because it is certainly hard to hear.

Secondly we must challenge our readers. Children’s writers talk about takeaways and calls to action. We need to write powerful stories that will stick in the readers mind. We need to give them an ear worm that is going to stick with them and remind them that there is something they MUST do. That something is the call to action, the step that we challenge our readers to take.

As writers, we have the power to create worlds and change lives. To activate this power, we need to tell moving stories and dare our readers to step up and act.

--SueBE

To find out more about Sue Bradford Edwards writing, visit her blog, One Writer's Journey.

Sue is also the instructor for Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults which starts again 2/6/2017.

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6 comments challenging readers, social justice, TED, the powre of story, why we write, writing