I am so all-consumed with story lately. Every TV show, every movie, every commercial – what is the story BEHIND the story? What pain did the author go through to arrive at the story in front of me? I don’t know if it is because I had a conversation with a few of my beta readers about a poem that I wrote while in a very dark place or something else sparked this new curiosity. These readers saw a darkness, but not my darkness, which I thought was rather interesting. So, now I am looking at everything with new wonder.
In school, I learned about looking through the written words, to the feelings, and identify my relationship with the work. My college creative writing class also taught me that the life of the author is as important in deciphering the words on the page. Yet, I never wanted to change my relationship with the work by overlaying what the author was going through when writing the work. I wanted to feel my feelings, not the feelings of the author. Now, I am revisiting my thought process here. I may be too selfish to fully immerse myself into the work.
So, now, I am off to re-immerse myself, more fully this time, into my favorites and maybe find some new ones again.