So, I’m coming up to the last part of my Master’s – I need to submit a 15,000 word extract of a novel.
Which, I am very grateful to admit, coming up with an idea for this isn’t the issue – the issue is I have two novels in progress and don’t know which to pick.
My therapist keeps telling me to ‘feel my feelings’, something about acknowledging trauma, validating it. Sorry if that’s a rough transition from the above paragraph but it’ll all make sense soon. Promise.
Admitting you’ve been through traumatic stuff is difficult for me. If I don’t acknowledge how bad it was, surely it’s easier to get over, to recover from? Apparently it’s not and by ignoring my traumatic experiences I’m robbing myself not just of healing, but inspiration.
After all, and to paraphrase Pete Wentz, who wants to hear me write about tragedy?
Well… most people I think.
The best books are true. They’re raw, dirty, honest and exhausting. You finish them and you feel wrung out. The catharsis is complete, but more than that, you feel seen. So writing is about giving words to pain and the hopeless feeling that comes with being alive. So how can I choose between two stories which mean equally so much and so little to me.
Because I realise what I’ve been struggling with in my writing, isn’t style or structure or technique. It’s honesty. Using my stripped back, real feelings to tell a story that will resonate with others also feeling the same thing.
This fear I have about writing my pain and then it being ignored, or poorly received or mocked and discarded, it’s real fear. But does this mean I don’t deserve catharsis at all? Should I write what isn’t real, what doesn’t mean anything to anyone, simply to protect myself? Is this what years of ignoring trauma has resulted in? A cocoon to protect my psyche from ever taking risks again?
And then I won’t achieve anything. If you don’t risk it you won’t win it. Or however those phrases go.
Maybe I’m over thinking it. You write what you know and if I can’t even admit I know trauma, then how can it feed into my writing?
My point here, is that I have two stories in progress. Both deal with trauma in hugely different ways. They both deal with hugely different traumas I suppose. So how can I pick which one gets written first? How do I weigh it up and validate one over the other? Especially when it’s taken nearly a year in therapy for me to even be comfortable using the word trauma.
Well, I asked my husband.
My husband is also my proofreader. I’ll tell you what he doesn’t do – feedback on my ideas, stories, plots, narratives or inspirations. In some ways it’s kind of sad that the hardest hitting feedback I get doesn’t come from the love of my life, but then again stability is foundation and a strong foundation builds love to last a life time.
I don’t need adoration from him. I need spell checking.
So, for unbiased, vaguely nonplussed feedback I asked him to pick the story I should write. And he said ‘The one you’ve already written.’
Which, I suppose is obvious. I have a 80,000 word draft sat waiting for edits and rewriting. Obviously that’s the one I should choose.
Trauma, inspiration, catharsis – all of that matters, but not to my daily writing time allowance. I have so many hours to dedicate to my work and I can improve what I already have more than I can write something from scratch.
So there we go. Decision made. Fine tune and finish one trauma, before moving onto the next. Thanks husband. Thanks therapy.
LF Mills - author 