Your personal experiences can provide a wealth of source material for something you can publish, whether as an article or blog, book proposal, chapter, or complete book based on collecting enough experiences together. This approach to writing can be particularly helpful when things go wrong and you have a bad experience, particularly when you feel angry at someone you feel did you wrong. This method of turning a bad experience into something you can write about and publish cannot only be a way to release your feelings of anger or betrayal, so you feel better, but it can contribute to your career as a writer. You use your experience to gain more awareness or promotion for yourself, or to get paid for what you have written, as well.
I used this approach myself after I did some editing work for a publisher who didn’t give me early feedback but asked me to continue writing, and then stopped the job midway and refused to pay me, because the job he stopped wasn’t completed. Though I felt like writing the publisher a letter telling him off, instead I did some research on this publisher, discovered a long history of bad behavior, including suing a few individuals and companies for expressing an opinion about the poor quality of the company’s books. And the information I gleaned was enough for several articles which I published, opening the door to a future book on the key themes in these articles.
A good way to start the process is by writing down your initial observations and reactions to the experience, which can also serve to release any feelings of anger and betrayal you have. You can even write up your bad experience as a letter to the person or company which has offended you. Then don’t send the letter – a technique which psychologists and therapists sometimes recommend to clients to help them release their negative emotions. But beyond writing anything to feel better, think about how you can use this material for an article, blog, book proposal, book, film script, or other popular format that can lead to more promotion for your portfolio as well as money for your work. In fact, publishers often like these inspired by a true story projects, since it provides a promotional hook to help in selling the book or promoting the film.
More specifically, here are some things you can do to contribute to your writing career after you have a bad personal experience.
– Realize that if you were badly treated, many other individuals might have been, too. To find out, do an Internet search by the name of the company or its main officers. You may find a wealth of information about anything the company has done to behave badly. And this research could be the beginning of an investigative piece as well as your triggering an investigation by law enforcement against the company. Then, whatever you write about the company and what happened to you will have even more popular appeal.
– Turn whatever happened to you into an article or blog, though don’t use any names, so you don’t get into legal trouble. And if there’s enough to the story, you can turn this material into a proposal for a book you can pitch to agents or traditional publishers. Or you might write and publish the book yourself; then if you gain interest in the story and yourself, you can turn this book into a better deal with a traditional book publisher.
– Think about how you can build on what happened to turn your story into a novel or script, which you can then sell to a publisher or film producer, or publish yourself. For example, that’s what I did after I worked with a psychiatrist client. He was very difficult to deal with; had a strong sense of what should be in his script even though many scenes and much of his proposed dialogue seemed overly exaggerated and stilted. But he was the client, and though he paid me, he treated me like a secretary he could yell at and insult. So eventually, I wrote whatever he wanted without making any suggestions, like I was merely his typist. But afterwards, I turned this experience into a story about a psychiatrist leading a double life in participating in an underground criminal enterprise – and now this script is under consideration by several producers.
Thus, when bad experiences happen, look on them as the source of ideas you can develop in various directions – and ultimately use to expand your platform or gain money for yourself. By doing so, not only will you release any angry feelings, but you can gain in multiple ways from something you turn around to further your writing career.
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Gini Graham Scott, PhD, writes frequently about social trends and everyday life. She is the author of over 50 books with major publishers and has published 30 books through her company Changemakers Publishing and Writing. She writes books and proposals for clients and has written and produced over 50 short videos through Changemakers Productions. Her latest books include: TRANSFORMATION: HOW NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS AND SOCIETY ARE CHANGING YOUR LIFE and THE BATTLE AGAINST INTERNET BOOK PIRACY