[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Al, you brought up something very interesting about deserving and feeling like it’s our place within writing?
Alan Watt [Founder of L.A. Writers’ Lab] and Author: We were talking about a book when I got invited to teach at PEN Center USA about 12 or 15 years ago. It was to bring three writers to publication which is a really bizarre notion, especially if I’m all about process and the idea was the result. It ended up working for at least one of the writers; they got a publishing contract but I realized that it wasn’t just about craft. It was about these writers realizing that there’s this invisible barrier between being unpublished and published where you realize that your simple truth is enough and that what you have to express deserves to be heard.
I went to 25 published authors and I said Would you write an essay about your experience? The book is called My First Novel. I had them write their experience that led to the publication of their first book so that people could walk through the journey and realize they’re not alone. That every published author at one point was unpublished.
What they had to walk through was the willingness to tell their truth on the page in spite of the fact that they have no idea what the result will be.
Film Courage: I know you teach memoir writing as well. Do you find sometimes there’s an opposite of someone where they think their story is so amazing and My family came over on the Mayflower and I’m amazing and I need to tell my story and it’s not really that interesting?
Alan: No, the stories are always interesting. Again, it’s not what happens, it’s the meaning we ascribe to it. Everybody has a story to tell and everybody’s story is valid. My job is to facilitate writers in finding the story that lives fully and completely within them. The story:
-Isn’t the facts
-It’s not the events of their life
-IT IS the meaning they ascribe to these events.
It could be anything. It could be about your relationship with your cat that can be absolutely fascinating if you’re true to your point of view because everybody has a unique point of view but what we have to do is we have to overcome that sort of self-consciousness that Well gee, what are other people going to think?
When you allow yourself to let go of the result and put yourself in the process, that’s when I can’t tell you how many times…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
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