{"id":1272,"date":"2014-05-20T07:48:51","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T14:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=1272"},"modified":"2014-05-20T07:48:51","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T14:48:51","slug":"start-with-something-that-really-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/start-with-something-that-really-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"Start with something that really happened . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em><a title=\"Escaping into the Open\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Escaping-into-Open-Writing-True\/dp\/0060929294\" target=\"_blank\">Escaping into the Open, The Art of Writing True<\/a><\/em>, <a title=\"Elizabeth Berg\" href=\"http:\/\/www.elizabeth-berg.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Elizabeth Berg<\/a> (one of my favorite authors) writes:<\/p>\n<p>Whenever people ask me where I get my material, I am genuinely befuddled. &#8220;Well . . . from <em>life<\/em>!&#8221; is what I usually say. . . . each of us, no matter who we are or what we do, is offered potential story ideas daily. The people we know, the things that happen to them and us, the random scenes we witness and the conversations we overhear \u2014 all of these things are rich with raw material; all of them are capable of serving as a vehicle or springboard for a good story, in one way or another. We need only be aware. We need only be awake, and curious, and willing to share.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Berg.Escaping.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1273 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Berg.Escaping-197x300.png\" alt=\"Berg.Escaping\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Note from Marlene:<\/strong> Last night in the <a title=\"Jumpstart\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thewritespot.us\/jumpstart.html\" target=\"_blank\">Jumpstart<\/a> writing workshop that I facilitate, this very thing happened. I took a real life experience, wrote it in the third person, changed a few facts and ta-da . . . a freewrite based on a true experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Your turn:<\/strong> Start with something that really happened and write about it. Just write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Escaping into the Open, The Art of Writing True, Elizabeth Berg (one of my favorite authors) writes: Whenever people ask me where I get my material, I am genuinely befuddled. &#8220;Well . . . from life!&#8221; is what I usually say. . . . each of us, no matter who we are or what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[126],"tags":[68,182,105],"class_list":["post-1272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-write-2","tag-elizabeth-berg","tag-escaping-into-the-open","tag-just-write"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-kw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1272"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1272\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}