Everyday Canvas

Personal Pain Reflecting in Writing

Prompt: “Writers write about what obsesses them... I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.” Anne Rice

What do you think of Anne Rice’s approach? Do you also go, in your writing, to where the pain is?

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I don’t start writing about what pains me, on purpose, but I find that no matter how objective I try to be, my own personal pains end up getting reflected here and there. This especially happens with poetry, and with poetry, it specifically happened when we had the slams. It also occurred with just about all my novels; however, the pain is so hidden within my prose and inside the characters that even those who know me well cannot detect it, but I know it is there. So the obsession concept in the quote has some credibility.

About Anne Rice’s approach, there is no reason why any writer shouldn’t write about her or his own pain. After all, in our human experience, writing is a great friend and it offers some effective consolation to the ills that take us by surprise or shock us in a negative way. Especially in Ann Rice’s case, this must be a fact, since her writing is so powerful.

Anne Rice is probably discovering her characters’ psychological world within her own world and finding out that fear is an ally when injected into characters and situations. This is a great approach because it can give multiple dimensions to a writer and to his characters as well. I think Anne Rice and other authors like her deliberately channel the tragedies in their lives to creative fictional masterpieces

As for me, I have the habit of facing my pain after a good amount of time passes over it. I don’t know how this quirkiness happened to come about in my life, but it must have something to do with my inability to cry when some grievous event takes place. Probably for the same reason I am only aware of the pain in my writing, after it shows up on its own.