“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was a brilliant writer plagued by depression. Writing seemed to be her solace. Writers often come across writer’s block and can struggle to get their story onto the page. However, reviewing this quote can give us insight into how to conquer the dreaded writer’s block.
When Plath says “everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it” she means being able to share our most personal stories with the world. It can be easy to play it safe with writing and not push ourselves to tell the story inside of us that needs to come out. The story that is hardest to write is sometimes the one you need to tell.
Plath then expands on this thought by saying “the imagination to improvise.” Every story, whether fiction or non-fiction, benefits from hyperbole or further analysis of what happened in real life. Stories come alive because of our take on real-life events. A video can tell you what actually happened, but a story can tell you what was felt by the people involved. In order to make your writing more than just an outline of events, you have to improvise and expand on what happened.
Lastly, “the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Once you have the story in mind and where you want to improvise and expand, don’t lose faith. Don’t begin to question if your choices are the right ones. There is no right and wrong in writing. Your story is unique and creative because it’s told by you. So, sit down to write and let the tale come alive.
Holds very true. I try to put a little bit of life experience in every story I write.
All my works hold an essence of a personal life story or experienced emotion. I mean Hinata and Eiji’s images in TMS was based off a couple of good looking work colleagues everyone kept ogling.🤣 They were such a motivator for boring team meetings, let me tell you.
I don’t think a story can be written without adding some personal experiences into it. Just as the reader is subjective in understanding and perceiving what they read. The writer is subjective in what they deliver to the story. If that makes sense. 😳
Sometimes we have a story that does deep and maybe so shameful and so well kept that the waves of thoughts give it a dimension all of its own.
Visualizing and remembering putting the thoughts down on paper, does that release the demon that we have kept hidden from the world?