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Q&A Dealing with personal trauma in writing

Often, I develop mythos that are based on extensions (sometimes fantasy-based) of personal trauma. There are times when it becomes too personal and I literally feel like hitting the shift-delete on...

2 answers  ·  posted 13y ago by ina‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:05:52Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/4618
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar ina‭ · 2019-12-08T02:05:52Z (about 5 years ago)
Often, I develop mythos that are based on extensions (sometimes fantasy-based) of personal trauma. There are times when it becomes too personal and I literally feel like hitting the shift-delete on everything. Most of the time, I don't do it - I just walk away. I move on with my dayjob, "real life," and forget about finishing this silly writ. And usually my cheap HDD crashes and I try to move on permanently. But, I always end up coming back to it.

When I try writing something that is not personal, I'm told that my writing is too generic. When I try writing something more personal, if I tell it "in a rush," I get the same flat feedback -- the only way that I seem to be able to get the right way to express it is to basically put myself in tears and re-live it as I slowly put it in words.

So how do I learn to write in a way that is neither too generic or too personal?

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2011-12-15T03:09:05Z (about 13 years ago)
Original score: 4