CREATIVE WRITING
Dealing with DIFFICULTY
Caroline Butterwick offers insights into best practices when it comes to writing about difficult experiences
Caroline Butterwick
Whether it’s a short story inspired by a holiday or an article sharing our DIY tips, many of us draw on personal experience in our writing.
At some point, most of us will have been through something difficult in our lives. Perhaps you’ve experienced a distressing illness, lost a loved one, or faced challenges like divorce or redundancy. You may prefer not to write about these, and that’s absolutely fine. Maybe writing is your sanctuary from hard times, and you would rather separate your life from your work.
But for some, difficult experiences provide inspiration. So how do we go about using these in a way that’s sensitive, relevant, and powerful?
Make the most of it When coming up with ideas for stories, articles, poems, or other writing influenced by your life, it’s useful to consider what you want your reader to come away with. Will they be inspired by your experience, find advice relevant to their own situation, or gain insight into a life they otherwise wouldn’t come across?
I often draw on my experience of living with disability in my writing. I start by thinking what I want the ‘reader takeaway’ to be. When writing articles about my experience of being a disabled student, for example, I’d ask myself what I wished I had known back when I was traipsing around university open days. While the articles are mostly about practical ideas, such as applying for support and settling into student life, I also wanted to leave readers with a sense of ‘I could do that’. I did this by reflecting on emotional challenges I faced and how I managed these. It meant revisiting the hard parts of my experience and thinking what others could learn from it.
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April 2021
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