Am I Boring?

This weekend I attended 'Guwanyi': National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers' Festival. It was held at the New South Wales Writers' Centre on a very rainy Saturday. The Writers' Centre is a lovely old building inside Rozelle Hospital grounds; and the perfect location for such a festival.

I went with another non-indigenous friend and we agreed that it was an insightful experience to listen to so many writers of indigenous background talk about their experiences, both as people and as writers; and to do so with a certain level of objectivity, not playing the part of the bitter victim, a box I believe Aboriginal people often find themselves in. So many of the writers had very moving, and sometimes tragic, personal and familial histories.

Many writers that I speak to write about themselves. Maybe not directly, but definitely on some kind of subconscious level they write about how they experience the world. At the moment I find it very difficult to do this. I often write about sadness, but it is not very often my own.

I realised yesterday that I have often felt like my own experiences and the way I think about the world are not interesting enough to write about. I am middle class and white. I had a lovely childhood and still have a loving family. I have already received a good education and am in a position to pursue further study. I am in no way complaining about any of these things, quite the opposite: I am very thankful for them.

My point is that I have never felt like I can write about myself because my life does not really provide any interesting material. And so I write other people's stories.

Of course, just because I don't write about myself does not mean I don't write for myself. And, in the end, I guess people that have had incredible experiences and go on to write about them are doing the same: writing for themselves.

I'm not sure what my overall point is here, exactly. I guess I'm interested to find out what motivates other people to create. Is it an exploration or an exorcisim of sorts?

A new project tomorrow! And we will put the responses to the last up sometime this week. Apologies for the disorganisation this month.

Image by soartsyithurts.

PS. I am aware of the irony inherent in me writing a post all about how I don't write about myself!