Isn’t that the goal of every writer – every artist – to communicate the universal in the particular.
You take what you know (in your way), through your medium, and you try to communicate a universal truth as you see it.
It could be:
- A poem pointing to the nature of motherhood
- A painting expressing the passage of time
- A book explaining the reference point needed to explain evil
- A sculpture highlighting a selfless sacrifice
- Maybe a drawing of a flower, to simply document the beauty of the day
But you see it through your worldview, in your place and your time.
Isn’t that all art is?
One editor said that the historical novel I’d submitted had “too much integrity and not enough sex” (what do you do with that information?), but the complaint I heard most often was that my work was “too regional.” For years, I responded with anger and tried to argue my case. “Look, all writing is regional, isn’t it? We all have to come from somewhere. There was nothing magic about Shakespeare’s hometown. Dante was Italian, Goethe was German, Dostoyevsky was Russian, and I’m from rural West Texas. We write about where we are and try to find the universal in the particular.”
-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)
