Doris Dörrie's LIVE, WRITE, BREATHE: a book review by Satis Shroff

Review by Satis Shroff: Live, Write, Breathe REVIEW: Live, Write, Breathe (Satis Shroff) Doris Dörrie: Leben, Schreiben, Atmen, Diogenes, Zürich 2019 The book introduces you to the Unbearable Lightness of Writing about whatever comes to your mind. Virginia Woolf and James Joyce did it and you do it too, namely, use your own power of associations and observation that you have experienced in the past. Doris Dörrie adds nothing new to what we already know in Creative Writing. A US author named Roberta Allen has put it aptly and profusely in her book ‘Fast Fiction: Creative Fiction in Five Minutes.’ You have five minutes to write a story about grudge. Another five to write a story about falling or a laugh. Go! She uses prompts and exercises to show you how to create short-short-stories in spontaneous bursts with 300 prompts. Roberta Allen’s book was published in 1997 by Story Press, Ohio. Whereas Allen lets her own students tell their stories, Dörrie choses to tell her tales from her own autobiography, which makes it an interesting read. Doris teaches Creative Writing at the College (Hochschule) for TV and Film in Munich. She says: ‘I write to find a meaning, albeit in the end I can’t find one.’ Nevertheless, it is a guide for people who write.’ Like I said, it’s also the biography of the well-known film director who made films like ‘Männer’ and Cherry Blossom Hanami. Themes: the writer’s themes are a place called Eisbach, at home, Die Dauerwelle (hairdo), my feet, I remember, I don’t remember, carrying on, marriage, wedding, a dress, superchick, goes to Japan, Heimatort ( a place called home), Why me? On Swimming, Blue Moon, yoga, A day, Kinder Museum, Ghosts, Medicine, faith (belief), loneliness and fish. Doris Dörrie pens her thoughts about autobiography writing, gives tips on Creative Writing with disarming innocence and honesty. The good thing is she, herself, writes and tells us about her life. She gets to know a handsome guy, falls in love, marries him and a child is born. She works, he photographs landscapes. She’s in stress. He, on the other hand, gets cancer and dies. The child grows up with her. She meets another guy, and they go on a diving holiday to the Philippines — she doesn’t like diving but is fascinated by the underwater world. Doris compares writing with underwater photography. She writes and travels, flashback to Germany and being German (strange, big blonde, she’s called ‘my little sauerkraut’ in French. She writes about shopping, stupidity, writing and reading, the ground under her feet, lunch lies, being someone else, in love, music, lost and found, we get to know each other, chocolate, addiction, bottoms, soap, piercing, marriage ring, skin, China, telephone, Stockton. Doris writes: ‘I’m a mother. In my dreams I’m not, I’m along and cool, underway in the world and do chain-smoking. When I wake up, I’m a mother ad non-smoker, and so tired, so terribly tired. My child and I’ve always hated it. I don’t like it when others still sleep, I feel alone and lost. Only we two, my child and I, are early morning in thee world. Wiwi: will Wiwi come today? Wiwi is travelling and we’ll accompanying him: to the USA, to Spain, the mountains, to the sea. Exercise: Write about an encounter with a child, a game. Recall how you yourself played, highly concentrated and forgetting yourself. This is the description of a state of happiness. You experience it also when you write, when you don’t do too much thinking, don’t look over behind your back and don’t criticize. It demands courage. Like when you’re playing. Do you know how it feels when you don’t know the rules of the game? Or when the others have changed the rules? There’s only one thing you can do: carry on writing. Immerse yourself again and again in the world of your own experiences and fantasies, like Alice in the Black Hole that led to Wonderland. The book has a lot of exercises based on the themes mentioned above. It’s a good buy if you like reading it in German. IMAGES-NA.SSL-IMAGES-AMAZON.COM images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com Doris Dörrea Writer Review Satisshroff