Everyday Canvas

Life Story, Stage, Literature's Universality

Prompt: Writing your life story. What are some things you would give highlights and details about?

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That is a very good question for those who would want to write their life stories. I have no interest in doing that. First, it is too much work and I don’t have the time. Second, no one would believe me. Don’t ask!

On the other hand, I can talk about a few ideas on writing one’s life story. First of all, it should have a central theme and a reason why you are writing your life story and what would be the secondary themes in it.

Beginning with childhood, the things to address are, what were the family dynamics, your parents, the place you were born and grew up, your spiritual upbringing or the lack of it, wealth or the lack of it, and who were the earliest people who stood up and still stand out for you. This is important because families and earliest experiences make or break the children. In relation to this, what you think you are like (your self-image) and how the person you shaped up to be was influenced by the earliest experiences should also be addressed.

The beginnings are the most important; then come your early adult years, the roads you followed as to relating to others, male-female relationships, education, work, and forks on your road and which turn you took, as well as your life goals in the beginning and if they changed along the way.

Another area is your life’s work. If you formed a family later or did something or other to influence the world or your community, these need to be shown. Your regrets and the things you are proud of are also worth mentioning.

Throughout the writing, other things can be revealed even if they are generally well-known, such as the changing of gender roles, political and social changes and upheavals. This is because the outside always impresses the inside.

Then, for the ending, the way you are looking at your future, how your life goals improved or changed for the worse, and what you expect as support from your family and your environment.

It is a very difficult job to be fair and truthful about one’s own life. So, to anyone who is thinking of tackling it, good luck! You’ll need it.

Prompt: Have you ever been on stage or performed for an audience?


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Yes, a few times in school. I was in a drama club at one time. I was first a porter in a Shakespeare play (all girl’s school). Then I graduated to Madame Butterfly, and a few other fancy stuff.

Funny thing is, I was never shy on stage. I am more modest in real life. Go figure!

Prompt: Donald Hall, a former poet laureate of the USA, who passed away on June 23, 2018, once said, “Literature starts by being personal, but the deeper we go inside the more we become everybody.”
What are your thoughts on the quote?

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The most clichéd advice for writers is write what you know. I take it as to not-referring to actual events, places, or actions, but to our thoughts and feelings about them. Let’s face it; literature in general, even the most realistic, is make-believe. In that make-believe work, however, are great truths of humanity that rise to distinction. That is why literature tells the humanity’s truth more than the facts themselves, as literature is probably based on the desire to reveal the author’s essential, secret self, to be known by others. Unfortunately, so many writers believe that advice, write what you know, to be the subject of their work and that what they write should be their factual experience, and consequently, so do their readers.

So many times, some members here thought what I write in my poems or stories to be the facts of my life, especially when I used the first person. Inside their reviews were some really hilarious comments.

Fact is, most writers try to write their ways into many characters whose lives they know nothing, or next to nothing, about, but while doing that, they discover the universal truths; thus, the deeper they can go into their own selves, the more they become everybody.