All writing is invented - Reading and writing - You, the writer

Creative writing - Mike Sanders 2014

All writing is invented
Reading and writing
You, the writer

In what might seem like an opposing fact to the autobiographical background of creative writing, all writing also is invented. Actually, these two facts complement each other. Even when writing about a true event from your life, it’s important to remember that it’s filtered through your individual mind, set of senses, and memories, all of which are solely yours. Thus, even the truest event you might recount is still an invention in the sense that it’s shaped by your unique perspective and subjective interpretation.

Invention is a fun and liberating force in writing. It means you can do virtually anything you want. Other time periods, mysterious people, and alien civilizations are all fair game. The way you choose to portray them—the nature of the writing itself—also is subject to your inventive choices and decisions.

Literally combining autobiography and invention is a key way to engage a reader because they’ll realize you’re doing your best to invent the circumstances of an event from your life that actually occurred. The following example, from the beginning of a book-length memoir titled SCHOOLED, attempts this approach:

I count myself among the luckiest of creatures. By nature and profession I have had the good fortune to have been a teacher and a learner for nearly my entire life. It is the best occupation I could ever hope for. I am surrounded by brilliant young people and coworkers who constantly teach me new things, and who also seem to believe there are things I can teach them. Though I have not always been so, I have become grateful in retrospect for the other jobs I’ve had—farm hand, trail guide, manual laborer, park ranger, bus driver, writer of semi-important speeches and unimportant manuals, among many others—and have come to love them all in different ways for the things they taught me. In the end, however, my collective experience in these employments has only served to make me treasure even more my current occupation, which I happen to consider my true calling.

DEFINITION

A memoir is a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on his or her personal observation.

The autobiographical element of this example is self-evident, but the inventive quality lies in the way the author choose to frame his life and occupations. Indeed, his positive tone and the energy with which he relates his wide-ranging jobs promise to draw in the reader. This person is thankful for the nature of his life and the many different types of employment he has experienced. Why? In order to discover the answer to that question, the reader must continue reading the book.

WRITING PROMPT

Think of an actual event from your own life. Try to inventively portray it from a number of perspectives: happy, nostalgic, remorseful. Note how the event changes as it takes shape through these different filters of invention.