How can I organise my experiences to write about
by Hanna
(Sweden)
Hi,
I always felt I could be a writer. I write a poem once in a while and people admire my poems. The last ten years I went through hardship, I was treated unjustly and I had to move from one country to the other, I lost love, lost relationship of family and found my self in financially difficult situation, reaching no way out. I found myself in many place of life. Painful journey on a personal life but rich in experience to write about.
How can I organize my experiences and start to write about them? Could you give me advise?
Answer: One person's life contains so many stories. The trick is to find the story in your life that you want to tell.
The difference between a story and a series of events is that a story has meaning and a structure to convey that meaning.
You had a problem or a goal. It was hard trying to cope with that problem or try to achieve that goal. Maybe you succeeded or maybe you didn't. Maybe, in the end, you are better off, wiser even, because you made the right choice ... or perhaps you suffered because you made the wrong choice. Either way, there's a lesson, a meaning in your experience.
That's how your organize your experience so that you and the reader can find the meaning in it. You look for that structure in the series of events, linked by cause and effect, that led you from who and where you once were to who and where you are now. What is the lesson of the journey?
It could be that you may only discover the meaning in the writing. You may have to write these events to discover what sense your life makes. Then, you edit out all the little events that are not connected or had no impact on the story you are telling, until you are left with just the essential events of the journey.
Best of luck.
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