On Theme – making the specific universal

_{cover image by JEShoots via Pixabay}

I promised several months ago to write a follow up to my post The Origin Story and here it is. After that post, some interesting discussions followed within the Pens Around the World community – there is a members only area of our website. We talked about the impacts of childhood or family trauma on origin story, identity as a writer if you are no longer writing, being a writer who is “stuck” (e.g. with writer’s block), etc.

These conversations caused me to dig deeper into the universal themes of my life’s journey and my writing – elements of my unique story that readers could identify with themselves. After all, not only do we want people to read our stories, we want the stories to resonate with them, to keep them turning the page. This leads me to theme, whose finer points for some reason have eluded me as I write memoir or fiction based on personal experiences. Yes, I can type “theme” into a search bar and of course I was taught theme in multiple English classes in secondary school, e.g. I was instructed in two different classes to pick out themes in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. But that didn’t mean I deeply understood my own themes, and without that, can one write a compelling (universally-appealling) memoir? Or work of fiction?

So back to The Origin Story or however you would like to look at it. My brainstorms on structure and theme have yielded these results without a clear “aha moment”: hero’s journey (a quest for adventure, perhaps not knowing what is sought at the end of that quest, perhaps figuring it out (perhaps not)), heroine’s journey (internal character arc, emotional journey, healing), finding home (at the end of the journey, after returning from the journey). I have come to the relatively recent realization that home is community, home is belonging, that home is tribe.

Tribe is my origin story and tribes are my journey and destination, and I’m delighted I have found several of them. While my origin tribe is family, common values, common traditions, and supporting each other – sometimes and in various ways (yes, there are holes in that support, there are conflicts resulting in some pretty serious damage, hopefully short-term, and there are betrayals). I’ve also developed non-family tribes where we share common values, memories, traditions, a “language” of sorts, and where we can lean on each other sometimes. This includes amazing groups of friends, bookworms, intrepid travelers, fellow vegans, citizens of the world, and yes, writers.

Pens Around the World is one of those communities. We have some things in common – living or having lives in far flung places away from our comfort zones, a willingness to connect virtually with various corners of the world, and generously support each other through feedback on our writing pieces. Also through struggles in our writing and sometimes personal lives, including when we don’t feel like writers and we question what we are doing with our writing (if anything). It is a community I value and it helped me develop my writing themes, perhaps without knowing it.

I hope you know your tribes. If you’d like to post about them, please comment!