 Drama: March 20, 2013 Issue [#5581] |
  Drama
This week: Behind the Blog Edited by: NickiD89  
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| Like many of you, I've considered myself a writer my whole life. But in 2007, I shifted out of hobbyist mode, started writing for an audience, and embarked on the exciting journey towards publication. As I continue on that path and delve ever deeper into the craft, I feed an insatiable appetite for creative writing theory. I seek out how-to books and workshop experiences to augment and amplify whatever talent I possess. For those of you like me, here's a little theory to appease your hunger. |
| ASIN: B000FC0SIM |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 12.99
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My friend's husband is mentally ill. It isn't obvious; he's 40-something and looks like you and me, talks like you and me, holds a good job. Over the years I knew he struggled with depression, but I had no idea what was really going on. My friend is a stand-by-my-man woman, so as his illness morphed in the past couple years, spinning downward into ever darker, uncharted territories, she's stood by his side with compassion and support, enduring his intermittent explosive "episodes" and hours of silence, shielding their children, as best she can.
Yesterday, she took me into her confidence. She started out strong, detailing the reality of her life in stoic, practiced tones. But like a rubber band held taut for too long, the tension she's lived with snapped at her emotions as she talked and I listened. I listened. It'd been a long time since someone she knew listened to her.
When the last tissue was pulled from the box, I asked her how she's been surviving, so alone with no one to talk to about such heavy burdens, she told me she started an anonymous blog a couple years ago. She writes her truth on her blog. Her online site has become her safe place, her harbor out of the storm, a place where she remains nameless and her anonymous supporters rally around her. She has over 3,000 followers.
After she left, I kept thinking about the idea of an anonymous blog. A few years ago, the final round prompt for WYRM's Gauntlet contest was centered around an anonymous blog. Finalists were instructed to visit the Wordpress site, read the blog posts visible there, and then we were to construct our POV character based on the "voice" and the content of the blog, (It was even up to us to decide the blog writer's gender.) It is, to today, one of the most creative contest prompts I've ever encountered.
There are many free blogging platforms available on the Internet, and Writing.com members have a blog option with an upgraded membership. Three ways you can use an anonymous blog in your writing are:
Launch an anonymous blog to give voice to a new character. You, the writer, can disappear, evaporate, cease to be. This space is for her (or him) to speak her mind, find her voice. She can write about her day, or something that happened at work, or something important she's planning. She can vent about her friends or swoon about a new man she met the night before. As she writes about her life, she'll reveal her hopes and dreams, her fears and disappointments, her struggles. Have you already identified some of the plot points in your work-in-progress? Let her describe the scenes as if they'd just happened to her. Imagine what you'll learn!
Launch an anonymous blog to finally write the first draft of that family history you've always said you'll write. Chances are you don't have a perfect family (who does?) and chances are you would risk hurting some members' feelings if you wrote the truth about your family, as you know it. Chances are that's why you haven't wanted to write anything in the first place. (I can relate!) The tricky part about memoir writing and creative nonfiction is the genres ask us to tell the truth. What better place to speak from the heart without fear of consequences than the safe haven of an anonymous blog? Each post can relate a specific event from your past, a special memory that may be good or bad, but that must be told in order for your truth to be valid. Just like any first draft, not everything will make it into the final copy. 
Launch an anonymous blog to speak freely about your life. My friend has found incredible solace by writing down the events that unfold as her husband is in crisis. Insights come to her that she wouldn't have grasped had she not articulated her feelings in writing. I have long considered doing this. Throughout a typical day, we are sometimes obligated to where masks, to hide our true feelings because they are inappropriate, petulant, or less important perhaps than the feelings of another. Let your real voice ring, unobstructed by life's masks, and speak with honesty on an anonymous blog.
I'm happy my friend has opened up to me. She probably doesn't know how much she's helped me, by sharing her struggles. The ripples are powerful. I think I'll launch an anonymous blog and talk about it.
Question For Next Time: Do you blog regularly? Do you use your real name or are you anonymous, with an online persona?
Thanks for reading!
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Amazon's Price: $ 15.99
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Question For Next Time: Do you blog regularly? Do you use your real name or are you anonymous, with an online persona?
Last Month's Question: What was the last piece of nonfiction you wrote for an audience? Here's what readers said:
zwisis -- I used to work in public relations, and ran the company for a few years. I found it very difficult to start writing fiction after I left the PR world. In PR we have to be economical with our writing, so it took some time before I was able to use words for detail and description instead of advertising. Great newsletter!
Thank you! It's so funny, because I'm on the other end of this spectrum. I'm going from writing fiction to PR, and my challenge is to cut to the chase, trim pretty descriptive words and replace them with high impact words the average consumer can understand/relate to. Not easy for the kind of fiction writer I am! My style has always been lusher than is necessary in PR. Thanks so much for the comment!
Cassie Kat  -- The most recent piece I nonfiction that I've written for an audience is a tie between an article for my journalism class (read by my teacher and classmates), and a memoir essay for my creative nonfiction class (written not only for my classmates and my favorite teacher, but also for my family, who were mentioned in the essay
I love creative nonfiction! The freedom the genre offers to writers compared to straight memoir writing draws me to it again and again. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Elle - on hiatus  -- The last piece of nonfiction I wrote was a cover letter for a job application. But I am trying to (slowly) put together a family history and that is a huge nonfiction challenge. I'm taking it in small bites.  Thanks for your newsletter!
Thanks, Elle! I have always wanted to put together a family history too. My biggest challenge will be telling the truth that will be hard for family members to hear, both my truth and and individual family members' truths -- as I understand them. BIG project, indeed! Good luck with yours!
See you all back here on April 17, 2012. Until then, have a great month!
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| ASIN: B01DSJSURY |
Product Type: Kindle Store
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Amazon's Price: $ 5.99
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