Drop in at Women Writers’ Fest tomorrow
Remember the times, that one wrote diaries, almost like a daily dialogue with oneself... the day's happenings, events, plans etc, mixed with emotions and sentiments, so that the diary became one's best friend...
We were possessive about our diaries back then, they contained secrets...and memories that we could look back upon and laugh or cry at... These diaries pretty much documented our lives and the age we lived in. It was right out there, all about ourselves. The Greeks called it Hupomnemata as per Muchael Foucalt in his book Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth.
Foucault says that “writing transforms the things seen and heard into tissue and blood.” Through writing the notes, the writer assimilates what he or she has seen or heard and almost gives it a new life.
The other more spoken about form of writing on one’s self is autobiography. Different from the introspective memoirs captured in the diary, an autobiography is more public. It encompasses a situation where the writer is both the author and the subject. While there is certainly an element literary craft here since it needs to be presented to the reader, the autobiography writer also needs to be very true to the integrity of facts. Otherwise, the autobiography can well nigh become a fictional piece of writing. Very often the autobiography can become layered, walking a tightrope between fact and fiction, leading the writer on to a journey of self-discovery.
But what happens when the writer is writing pure fiction? A made-up story conjured up often contains shades of the author too. One’s own experiences, memories, feelings is bound to be straddled all over the writers body of work. Although the plot may be made up, the emotions and thought process will definitely belong to the writer. It is after all in the perception of the author that the characters and situations get plotted. Hence whether it is writing memoirs or a autobiography or even plain fiction the writer and his writings will overlap in different measures.
