Writing from Personal Experience: Janet Fitch on using the deep parts
“Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don’t want people to know.
“White Oleander, for example, was so much about loneliness, and I was revealing something about myself. You have to work as deeply as you can to give the reader something worth reading, but you’re also showing things about yourself that you’re not pleased with.
“It’s your flaws, not your strengths that go down in the depths of your books. You’re exposed, like dreaming you’re naked in a public building.
[HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE DARK PLACES YOUR CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN?]
“I’ve been depressed many times in my life. But under it all I’m an optimist. I’ve never been in that extreme a state, like my suicidal character Michael Faraday in Paint it Black. I have to tell myself, Life can be good, and I can get through this. This will pass.”
Janet Fitch – from interview by Mary Curran-Hackett, Writer’s Digest
Related Talent Development Resources pages:
article: Creativity and Depression, by Douglas Eby
Depression and Creativity section
depression relief: products / programs
~~
