Mining the places you have lived can be a great way to unearth ideas. Too often we feel that the places we were born and raised lack the sort of exoticism that will attract readers. We think this because the places are not exotic to us. We take them for granted. Believe me, I share this feeling. I was born and raised in Wisconsin, which is synonymous with, even symbolic of, cheese.
Of course, what is ordinary to us can be exotic to someone else. The key is being able to truly see the world around you, finding the details that evoke it. A world that is keenly evoked will be exotic to those who don't know it well and will allow those who do know it well to see it with fresh eyes. So don't dismiss the place where you live or where you grew up as bereft of idea possibilities. In fact, it's probably full of them. If you aren't seeing them, look harder. If you hear yourself say, "Nothing happens where I grow up," or, "It's just a normal, typical place," then your missing something. The words "normal" or "typical," are a writer's enemies. They tell us you're not seeing beneath the surface, and readers come to writers for help in seeing beneath the surface. You must follow the command of Ezra Pound's artistic commandment to "make it new."
1) Draw a map of the neighborhood where you've grown up. If you grew up in several neighborhoods, draw maps of each or choose one from among them. On the map(s), write who lived where, note places where events, large or small, took place.
2) Find your city and state in a road atlas. Look at the place through the eyes of a traveler, someone who has never been there before. Note the names of highways and counties, rivers and places of interest. Write these down as though they are unfamiliar to you.Which ones would you like to see? Continue your investigation of this place by thumbing through a travel guide. Note places of interest, and note details that you didn't know about or had forgotten. Find out if you can have 2 or 3 tourist brochures sent to your home.
3) Research the history of the places you lived. Find out how they were settled, which tribes of American Indians lived there. What events in the past helped to shape the identity of this place? What cultural forces helped shape it? Of course, take notes.
4) What is the public perception of your city, state or region? In other words, what do people who don't live there think about--or think they know about--where you live? For example, some people who are not from the South believe it to be a backward, slow-paced world of politically conservative views. We think of southern California as a place of glamour and hedonism. How is your area perceived? Start big, with a region or state, and move to the small. For example, I live on the NE side of Minneapolis, which is seen as the_________________ by people from the South side of Minneapolis.
5) Now that you've gotten yourself ready...it's time to bring it all together. Use your information to write a short-story based off of your home community experience. This means that you base the setting, the characters, and even some of the events off of your actual neighborhood.
Heffron, Jack, The Writer’s Idea Book. Cincinnati, OH: Writers Digest Books, 2000
Heffron, Jack, The Writer’s Idea Book. Cincinnati, OH: Writers Digest Books, 2000
Friday, February 23, 2007
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