Boxes · 5:08am Dec 16th, 2015
As I type this, I am laying on the floor of our guest bedroom. Well, on my mattress, which is on the floor of the guest bedroom. We didn't fully set up my bed.
We're in the process of painting my room, then we'll replace the carpet, and then I'll be back to my room. My belongings will stay in boxes until we sell the place, and they might stay there for longer, depending on when we sell. There's really no point in unpacking if we move in May and I get my own place in June.
Packing up everything you own is an interesting experience. There's an awful lot of stuff I own that I just plain never use, like my books (read all of them!) or my notebooks (filled 'em all!), or any of the stuff in my closet. I also had a bunch of papers that I was certain I had already thrown away.
In among it was my old writing.
I know almost every author shudders at the thought of their early writing, but mine is not particularly great. I actually thought it was a journal entry at first. Such was the nature of my writing. It's cringeworthy how transparent those stories were. This continued into high school, even; if anything, it got worse. Gone were the childhood wish fulfillment stories (probably my real first fan fics, considering a good number of them were either superhero ripoffs or Pokemon), instead replaced with stories about real-world stuff with the names changed out.
There's something to be said for that, though. I mean, self-insert stories are generally terrible, don't get me wrong. But there's still a certain amount of genuine...ness to them. The author is necessarily pouring quite of bit of himself or herself into it, and an author really feeling the story they write helps the tale to come alive in a way that pure skill alone just can't accomplish. If the story is real to the author, it's more likely to be real to the reader.
I think I've overcorrected. Instead of going too far the one way and basically writing my life, I took myself out of the equation as much as possible. I stuck to the simplest plots possible and generally didn't stretch characterization any further than I had to. Characters pretty much stay the same, except that they have someone to make kissy faces with at the end. It worked great in terms of productivity--it's much easier to write silly little comedies or shipfics that don't go past 3k most times than to write more complex pieces with more developed story arcs and where characters (gasp!) actually change.
I'm not saying that I'll be making characters more like myself or writing my own life. That would be a mistake. What I am saying, however, is that I won't be afraid to make stories more personal if they need to be. My favorite stories that I've written (The Dull Afterglow, Growing Up, and Silence) are ones where the story wasn't exactly about me, but I could sympathize with what the characters were going through. They weren't my best-written stories, but those were the ones that hit closest to home for me, and I think it showed, based on the comments and feedback I've gotten on them.
What do you think? How much is too much when it comes to how personal a story is? Does it really even matter?
A story is an act of public communication, therefore I would apply the same rules as you do when you are at a party: the goal is not to be personal so much as it is to be personable. Personablility is being personal for other people. Tell the tales people like, not the ones you like. If they are the same, awesome -- tell those first because you are probably going to tell them more passionately than the others. Otherwise be as real as it helps you make other people enjoy themselves.
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I think that's a good way to think about it. I guess I'll have to find that proper level again, though. It shouldn't be too hard--I seemed to have it down pretty well during the stretch of stories I mentioned.