Be True To Yourself

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare makes it seem easy but when you are trying to be true to yourself you can be challenged on a daily basis.

For example, your boss may have strong political opinions you vehemently disagree with but in the work situation, you may feel forced to keep your true opinion secret or worse you feel compelled to agree with your boss.

Most of us don’t like getting into arguments, especially in the workplace but it can be difficult to avoid if you decide to defend your true beliefs and opinions especially if your opinions challenge or offend those of someone in a power position.

Nobody wants to be a people-pleaser but when even a difference of opinions in a social gathering can trigger an argument or even a fight it’s understandable that we often prefer just to keep our mouth shut.

I prefer to save my energy for something more creative than arguing with someone whose opinion will never change.

That is why, to me, creative writing is a great opportunity to be true to yourself.

You can choose to write whatever you want.

You and you alone pick your stories and themes and it is up to you how you deal with them.

Just be prepared to deal with the fact that there will undoubtedly be those who dislike not just your work, but may even dislike you personally, on account of something you have written.

When I wrote my first novel Piggy Monk Square, I used to worry about the way I was portraying the area in which it was set; Toxteth in Liverpool which is where I grew up.

The area had a bad reputation at the time and became infamous for the riots in the eighties.

I know that there were plenty of good people there and who are still there working hard to improve the area and make positive changes in their environment.

For a while, I worried about offending them.

I was not portraying the area in a positive light, but is that a writer’s job?

The more I thought about this the more I came to accept that to be true to myself I had to write the story as I saw it.

Of course, my own perceptions and experience influence my writing but that is as it should be.

The writer’s mind is like a stew – we create the fiction of course, but all our experiences, thoughts, perceptions, everything is there.

I was honest in what I wrote and when the publisher at the time described Toxteth as being like a character in its own right I was happy.

I’d been understood. To me the area was a character, it was everyone who had ever lived there; the good, the bad and indifferent.

I don’t believe a writer should be expected to be an ambassador for their country, race, religion, or any other aspect of their background but I do think a writer should be true, first to themselves and then to their story.

After that – it’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Never give up. And most importantly, be true to yourself. Write from your heart, in your own voice, and about what you believe in.
Louise Brown.

PIGGY MONK SQUARE

A dark and funny 1970s Liverpool story. A policeman is trapped. Two girls know where but swear to keep the secret because the truth will destroy them.

Laugh and cry at this heartbreaking story told by a young girl.

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