Experience—whether it be through memories or other elements of life—is a seed a writer plants to grow a garden of stories. Long or short form, narrative or poetic, stories are housed in what I call, The Writing Garden.
The Writing Garden draws from the old saying of “write what you know.” A writer draws upon their life to inspire their creations, which is why it is common to find parallels between the story and the writer’s personal life. Often writer’s base characters off of someone real that exists within their word and have possibly interacted with them in some way. It can be as simple as taking someone’s quirk and intertwining with a character, or taking the person’s entire essence (or who the writer perceives them to be) to create the character. There are many ways to connect a story to the writer, as writers often tend to draw from experience to develop a story.
Although this concept is black and white for creative non-fiction works, there is a grey area for works of fiction. Parallels between life and story could be unintentional, but our lives are great inspiration for creatively sharing our voices.
Stories blossom from the words of a writer, pricked from it's roots of the mind and passed along to the readers. As we read, scents of The Writing Garden flare into our brains as the words flow across the page.Think of the pedals as the chapters and the stem as the plot structure; the soil is the writer’s essence. Each flower is its own and different from the others, but they all share the same garden. The Writing Garden exists within the writer's mind, but it's open for the reader to enjoy its art.