The Writing University's Eleventh Hour podcast features recordings of illuminative craft talks from the renown writers, novelists, poets, essayists who present at the Eleventh Hour Lecture Series during the University of Iowa's Iowa Summer Writing Festival.
Each week we release a tailored craft talk from the series, focusing on a wide range of topics such as Transforming Life into Writing, Humor Writing, The Music of Language and so many more.
Episode 114: Mixed Feelings
In this episode, Mixed Feelings, writer Lon Otto discusses memoirs and essays written about events that are still unfolding.
In creative writing, truth isn’t everything, but emotional truth almost is. Whatever the genre, however familiar or strange the situation or action, readers need to believe that the emotions in a piece of writing are true. And nothing conveys emotional truth more powerfully than mixed feelings. Combining different emotions, including conflicting emotions, can strengthen their intensity as well as deepening our sense of their authenticity. In this talk and conversation we will explore some of the ways in which mixed feelings work, looking at examples from various genres and considering occasions when mixing emotions might fail us.
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