Real Words

I recently read two books by the same author about the same basic topic. One is a non-fiction account of the true story that happened. One is a novel based on some of the same experiences that the author went through. Reading both books is a great exercise for any writer because it captures the essence of the difference between non-fiction and fiction when it comes to writing from personal experience.

The first book that I read was Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. The author of these books is Ann Hood, a woman who suffered the terrible loss of her young child to an early death. Comfort is the non-fiction account of what it was like to deal with that loss, to go through that grief, to try to live again after the death of a child. There were many things that I enjoyed about the writing in this book (details here).

As I read the book, I learned that this author had also written The Knitting Circle: A Novel which became widely popular. As I’ve recently started crocheting and I liked the author I decided to check out this other book. I didn’t realize until I started reading it that the story is based on the story of Hood’s loss of her daughter but that it’s a fictional approach to the situation.

It was interesting to read the novel after reading Comfort. There were many little details that you could see had been pulled directly from the life of the author and converted into fiction. All great fiction is rooted in some sort of personal experience because that’s where the emotion for it comes from. However fictional tales are told more neatly and cleanly than real life plays out. Many details from the author’s life are altered or added to the characters in the novel to make the characters ore accessible and interesting to the people who choose to read this book.

Reading the two books in this manner really gave me a lot of insight as a writer into the writing process. I can see the benefit of keeping a non-fiction journal of your life and then using the information as the bare bones starting point of a highly crafted novel. Of course we know this already as writers but it’s something that you really get to see in action if you read Comfort and then read The Knitting Circle. It’s not just that they are good books (though they are) but that they provide excellent examples of how to write about the same thing in different ways.

This information is useful even if you aren’t interested in writing a novel based on your life. Even as someone who writes only for the web you can use this information. You can see how your own personal blog post or social networking updates could be converted into more widely read articles online. Reading these two books with an eye towards that is a great exercise for any writer. It’s definitely been a great exercise for me!