Making Life Meet Art

Artists of all sorts are recommended to draw from their own experiences to influence their work. But how far is it appropriate to go when putting your life on paper/canvas/the screen?

I recently went through a very tragic personal experience that has definitely had a profound effect on me. There were moments during it where I could see a beautiful, sad painting, and others that had more true drama than anything I've seen on television or film recently. The question I'm left with is should I let this experience influence my creative work,and if so, to what extent?

For the majority of my early years as a writer, I avoided letting any of my personal experiences appear in any form in my writing. Of course, my influences would appear, whether it was the music I was listening to, other films I had watched, or emotions I was feeling at the time. I'm sure there were characters which sounded like me, as I let my voice go through them. But I purposefully made it so when reading one of my scripts or stories, you would not see stories or people from my life that anyone would recognize.

This changed after college, with my short film WASTED ON THE YOUNG. Inspired very directly by a friendship I had with a girl who would fall from grace due to drug addiction, and eventually find her way out, it was the most personal film I had written, and when I was deciding on whether I should make it, I had to ask myself three main questions: would the girl ever see the film; if she did, what would she think of it; and should it inform my decision to make this film either way?

In the end, I made the film. I didn't think she would ever see the film, and if she did, it shouldn't matter. This was my story as much as it was hers, and nothing used in the story was information told to me in confidence (parts came directly from a blog she posted on MySpace).

The film came out okay (I am still a much better writer than I am a director), but it was something I could stand by, as even if not every detail was true to life, the emotions of the story came through and reflected reality as I saw it.


But what happens when the story you want to tell isn't just yours? My recent experience is one I share with a number of people, some who are far closer to it than I am. Part of me wants to paint an image based on a photograph I took, but I feel it would come across as exploiting a tragedy if I tried to sell that piece. And there is a truly moving film in the story, but who's story is it to tell? Do I have a right to tell this story, and if I were to try, should it be from my perspective (the one I know best)? If I go in that direction, how do I make the story not about me? How can I do justice to this very personal tale in a way that's respectful to everyone involved? How do I avoid making it sentimental, shmaltzy crap?

These are all questions creative people should ask before creating art based on their personal experiences. I don't claim to have an answer, as each experience will differ and it's up to the artist to decide how they would like to handle.

Or you can just do what I usually do - tell stories about stupid gangsters, alien wrestling leagues, music mystery hunters, and fake crack babies. Only bits of my personal life in those.