For many years Diane Corriette was a frustrated writer. She stepped out of her comfort zone by attending one of Words of Colour Productions’ early workshops in writing for magazines back in 2007. After a few false starts she stumbled across flash fiction and has never looked back. A digital marketing specialist, Corriette helps local business owners build a web presence using WordPress blogs. With a passion for writing she shares her flash fiction memoir stories on her blog Pen, and will be publishing more of her own work from April 2014. Corriette reveals her challenging but rewarding journey to writing her memoirs.
The urge to get down on paper what was swirling around my head before it disappeared was overwhelming. Still, there was a part of me that knew if I didn’t keep very still and allow it to unfold it would be lost forever. So I waited.
They never took very long, these morning free flowing stories. They would float into my half conscious mind as my eyes opened to another day. Eventually I’d get up and scribble down what I remembered but within days it would end up in the dustbin. I was just too scared to share them with anyone. Self-criticism and the fear of being criticised, maybe even ridiculed, stopped me from doing anything more than enjoying them in my own personal teenage world.
My English teacher believed in me. She told me to write but all I did was hide my passion for writing until the age of 30 when I made an attempt at writing, sent it off, was criticised and refused to try again. If you trace the timeline of my desire to be a writer you will find plenty of starts and stops. What was stopping me? A whole load of self inflicted “lack” which overwhelmed me; helping me to find all the excuses I needed to avoid what I so passionately wanted to do.
Then in April 2007 I took the Words of Colour Productions course on writing for magazines and the world of writing became more real for me. At the same time the world of blogging was opening up. I used what I had learned about magazine writing to create content for my blog. I did that for a while but not long enough to succeed.
I took my lack of success to mean that I was not good enough rather than the fact that I needed to give it more time. In 2009 my writing came back to the limelight. This time I was sharing my poetry online in a private online network that I started. I loved it. The feedback was great but I didn’t see myself as a poet. I loved making up stories.
By 2012 my inner voice was screaming at me to look at writing again, and I made the decision to try again. That same year I discovered a genre called flash fiction – stories containing less than 1,000 words. From there my writing journey took off. I had found a genre I loved. Many of my stories were based on events that took place in my life. My memoirs were written as a series of very short stories.
Using self-publishing I released my first book called The Last Hut and 29 Other Flash Fiction Stories in October 2013. Today, I write flash fiction stories which I share on my blog, and I have put together a workshop called Memory to Memoirs – Writing Your Story. I use it encourage people to write their memoirs as a very short story as it can be a very healing and therapeutic process, sometimes even a liberating one. I am going to put the stories from a recent workshop together and help the community group self-publish the book.
I don’t believe in regret as it serves no purpose but I sometimes wish I had listened more to the floating stories of my teens. I wish I had studied English to PhD level and made writing my whole life. Still, even at 47 I have plenty of life left in me.
Recently my floating stories returned. They appear most mornings and now, I write them all down without hesitation.
You will find Diane’s online marketing work over at http://influencer.biz and her flash fiction stories at http://penandi.com.