Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2012

While reading a book yesterday, I came across this quote that one of the main characters made.  “A story is a letter the author writes himself….”  I couldn’t agree more with the saying.  The one who made the quote was referring to another main character who happened to be an author.   

Writers like to remember things.  We do so by jogging our memories in unique manners.  Much like others do…but…different.  Many of us keep journals—a veritable roadmap of where we’ve been—our hearts, minds, emotions, souls and how life has affected all the above.  We also write stories.  Some are based on those things we’ve written in our journal.  The facts may not be exactly the same or even mirror what really happened, but we do use our life experiences to influence how and what we write about. 

So it’s no surprise that someone would think that a story is a letter an author writes himself.  After all, who doesn’t like a good story?  And…if you’re the one creating said story, the possibilities are endless yet somewhat confined by things you’ve experienced, which lend themselves to season your writing to finely melded dishes worthy of gobbling up.

Does the fact that authors write stories as letters to themselves imply that we care not what others think of our writing?  Absolutely not!  Just that we write what pleases us.  Those things that bubble up from so far within us that we know not their origin, only that their births cannot be denied.

As a writer, I have a voracious reading appetite and love to read what other authors have scribed, wondering if I can catch glimpses of the writer’s true self in between the lines they’ve written.  Has the author revealed informational treasure nuggets about himself through their stories?  Do we get to see parts of them, normally well hidden, come into focus as they expound upon characters—their lives, sensibilities, happenings and what have you.

So here I’ll pause to implore that the next time you read a writer’s works, you try to see more than just the story they’ve created.  Search the pages to see what “hidden” story the writer might have infused the pages of his story with—those things that might reveal much about the author himself.