Writing About Yourself

It's difficult to write about ourselves: about the miracles and tragedies of our own lives because we don't want to seem solipsistic. And for some (like me), we may have a tendency to go within at times, which makes us less visible or memorable to a public near or far that has known us. So who's going to want to read what we write? We never know.
    That comes after. It's the writing that counts.
    And then there's concern about family and friends. Would they want to read about themselves in my stories?
    To address that problem, temporarily make them an image (a label) of whatever they are: a more general brother, friend, mother. This may help relieve the feelings about them that can block self-expression. You can think about what they'll think much later - in the revision process.
    Often, if you want to write or are destined to write, it helps to start by free-writing - just writing what comes - by hand (which as I've posted before) better accesses the creative mind. Think of something overreaching and important to you in your life and follow that feeling with words. They (the words) will come. They always come if you let them.
    As Dorothea Brande wrote in her 1934 classic “Becoming a Writer” Don't judge or reread what you've written, especially while you're writing, because that will block your access to imagination and what needs to be expressed.