Telling the Truth in Writing, Life & Art
Alexandra Kostoulas ??
Writer, Writing Coach, Founder at SF Creative Writing Institute
“Courage is your capacity to give.”
This is the last among many great nuggets of wisdom my first writing teacher, Jack Grapes, said to me and the group after Friday morning's phenomenal live stream that we hosted on our youtube channel at SF Creative Writing Institute. We discussed his groundbreaking new mixed media poetry book, Exit Music.?
But he also reflected on the Art of Writing, the journey of the artist as a young man, and what made him become a writer. He reflected on the meaning of life and death. I tried to ask critical questions that would open him up. And they did. He had the courage to give us the full thinking behind his work. He had the courage to tell the truth throughout the book, and again when we interviewed him.
All week, as an artist and a teacher, I’ve been thinking about the truth. One of my writing clients–who is also a teacher—said this week in class that he told one of his own students, “If it’s true, then it’s the right answer.”
I thought about this all week.
It is so hard to tell the truth, as a person, as a poet, as an actress, as a comedian, as a painter, as any kind of artist. It’s easy to want to hide.
How do we tell the truth in our art??
Very carefully.?
As human beings who have engaged in the full catastrophe of living, we are often made up of scars.?Our truth is deep and real.
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To tell the truth, we must have courage.?
Because I am a Method Writer having studied with Jack Grapes (who invented it), I will answer this question about telling the truth like a method writer.
I am here to tell you that becoming a writer involves struggling with the work of being real, telling the truth and having the courage to put your true self out there in writing, on the page, and in life.
Part of telling the truth in writing means writing down the particularities of our scars.
That’s what writing is all about.?It's painful sometimes.
It’s what will make other people care.
It’s what will make them come back to your blog or turn the page.
We have to have the courage to give the truth to our readers, to give it all.
It's what separates the wheat from the chaff--the human being from the AI.