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Items of interest concerning Hawthorne Books and its authors

Dangerous Writing Is Writing and Lying, by Tom Spanbauer Editor Matty Byloos, Editor’s Choice, April 8th, 2014 Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer…

08 Apr 2014|

Author Tom Spanbauer talks openly about the difference between the kind of writing he teaches, which is rooted in personal history and told through the filter of close personal narrative, and thinly veiled memoir writing that one might refer to as a Roman à clef, wherein a writer pens a story about real life, and then thinly veils the fiction by merely changing characters’ names.

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There are generally one of two assignments for people first starting out in a Dangerous Writing class. The first is to write about a moment that after you were different. The second is to write about an event that you don’t quite remember.

Both of these assignments ask the writer to go to his or her own personal experience, and then build on it. I like suggesting to new students that they go to personal experiences because the tendency these days seems to be to write vampire stories, or fantasy stories, or stories that the student thinks Hollywood would buy.

But more important, I think most students tend to believe that the story is something outside of them.

Also I think these assignments challenge many students’ belief that their own story is not important, is probably self-indulgent, and would break the taboo of sounding sentimental.

The Dali Lama once said: when you meet someone, look them in the eye and be kind, because within those eyes there is a great battle waging.

Since we’re all human, by going inside to our own particular battles, really what we’re all doing is fighting a much larger battle that is overarchingly human.

To talk about being human is to talk about the pain and sorrow in your own heart. To put that story outside yourself in the act of writing is to create an invention through which you can understand your own humanity.

To read the entire essay, go to Nailed.