on writing: writing out your anguish

[lagilman]

So CGAG met last week, and as part of the conversation, somehow we ended up talking about writing out of internal conflict, a.k.a. "using the shit life throws at you."


One of our members (call this person 'Z') came out and admitted that s/he was uncomfortable with the entire concept of digging down deep (or not so deep, in some cases) and pulling the emotion out of his/herself. Z worried that in doing so, s/he might uncork things best left, well, corked up. And that it wasn't worth it for the writing. That, if Z had to actually dig that out in order to get something saleworthy and memorable, maybe writing wasn't worth the cost to Z's peace of mind.

I can understand that, I guess.

Well, no, actually I can't.

*warning: what follows is purely my own, deeply held, deeply felt personal opinion*



Pain hurts. It is there to tell you that something is wrong, and once you know something is wrong and are taking Steps, pain should stop. But for some kinds of pain, the best thing you can do for it (the only Step you can take) is to make it useful.

There's a line from... Gaudy Night, is it? When Lord Peter says to Harriet, (about something being painful) "What does it matter, so long as it makes a good book?" He was being the manipulative male, story-wise, but he was not wrong. In order to move the reader, the reader has to feel emotion in the writing. In order for there to be real emotion in the writing to feel, the writer must also know the emotion. And I don't mean know in a theoretical, dry, academic "I researched this" sense, either. For a total knockout punch of a story, the author has to have f*cked the feeling, as it were. Known it in the most intimate, biblical sense possible.

Or, to put in an equally crude but more socially acceptably phrased way, the first rule of smut is 'don't let the virgin write the sex scene.'

No, not every sentence I write has a deep-seated emotional trauma behind it. And not everything I write comes from personal experience (considering some of the things I write, this is A Very Good Thing). But when I create a character, or run them through a scenario, something of that comes from within me. And I've discovered that the deeper and more emotionally impacted the 'something,' the more powerful the story. And the faster it sells.

Case in Point: "Harvey & Fifth," which appeared in Flesh & Blood and really needs to be reprinted sometimes soon, damn it. I wrote that story in the summer of 2001, a year or so after the event (a visit to the Oklahoma City memorial) took place. I knew no-one who died there. I had no friends or relatives who where there at the time. I had never been to Oklahoma City before that trip. But I had loved and lost unfairly, and something there moved me so deeply and so painfully in the loved-and-lost category that this story simmered and simmered and then flowed out of me in one painfully emotional catharsis. (And after I had written that story, 9/11 happened, and I have yet to write a story arising from that. Perhaps because I was able to write it before it happened. Or perhaps because I haven't yet been able to touch the pain from that event. Check with me again in about ten years. Nobody said the using would happen fast. Or easy.)


Other stories I've mined from my own personal pain? "Turnings" (Realms of Fantasy, sold first time out of the gate. "In The Aftermath of Something Happening," which will appear in Oceans of the Mind in a month or two. "Don't You Want to Be Beautiful?" from Did You Say Chicks? (yes, humor from pain. Time-honored tradition, that). "Catseye" from Familiars, which is still difficult for me to read, and yet is in the top five personal favorites of all my stories ever. That one came not so much from the pain of experience, but the pain of wisdom gained from experience.

Even writing the Wren & Sergei stories, I'm mining my own depths. The joys I've never acknowledged. The pains I've had inflicted upon me. The sorrows I feel on observation of cowardice and prejudice on a daily basis. The guilt felt because at some point I should have spoken, or acted, and didn't (that's where "Aftermath" comes from as well, the helpless guilt of the culpable observer).


I look at the body of my work, and I see that the very best -- the material that hits readers correctly, that finds editors willing to take a risk on it -- comes from the most deeply felt part of me. So what if I then have to clean up a little afterward? Isn't (within certain carefully observed mental-health-for-writers-is-different-from-other-folk guidelines) the story worth the work?

I think it is, anyway.

End ramble.



Of course, I may also be completely full of shite.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I'm apparently full of the exact same shite, so there you are. *g*

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

I think great writing can, in fact, come from the writer tapping deep, deep, deep into his or her own personal experiences, and that sometimes includes facing and utilizing pain.

On the other hand, a writer's job is to make stuff up. Sometimes we just fake digging deep, and maybe the reader notices, and maybe the reader doesn't. What's that famous anecdote about the actress who says she can't play the part because she doesn't *feel* it? The director says, "Too bad, fake it."

In Z's case, if she thinks digging deep and facing whatever trauma is buried there is too high a price to pay for writing something publishable, then I respect her opinion. She is the steward of her own soul. Maybe that trauma is indeed too painful to dig up and put on display, and she'll live a happier life not doing it. Some hornet nests are not meant to be stirred up.

[lagilman]

True. Very true.

Except that you really can only make up so much before the molded plastic seems begin to show. Even the least Method actor knows how to bring tears to their eyes when the viewer has to believe that they're hurting.

Very few of the truly greats make it all up.

In the end, it's going to be up to Z if -- if the cost of writing something that sells is using actual emotions -- if it's worth it. I was, as I said, sharing my own personal opinion, which is that yes, it is worth it, and it repays the pain in stories of lasting impact.

[deire.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can fake the feeling, but you can transpose it.

[unwrecked.livejournal.com]

Great post. I've had the same fear about writing that's close to the bone, but if you can take that pain and mold it into something new, creating something good from something hellish that hurts way deep inside, deeper than you'd ever admit to anyone else, I think it's a good thing. And I'm firmly against the whole "writing-as-therapy" mindset.

But exposing those emotions is a huge risk, and if you do it right, it pays off. That's why I still remember "Harvey and Fifth," and it still gives me a chill when I think about it.

[karenetaylor.livejournal.com]

If you're full of shite, what hope is there for the rest of us?

My example of this theory is my "Mexican Moon." It's an extremely painful and personal story for me...I still can't believe that I had the guts to write it. Much less have it published. But people responded to it amazingly and I was honored.

You learn something new every day

[banazir.livejournal.com]

You remember how I mentioned once when we were discussing the overloading of the term "coding" in computer science, emergency medicine, and literary review?

Well, I hear transpose (http://www.onelook.com/?w=transpose&ls=a) and get an image of a matrix operation that doesn't mean the same as inverse (except for square (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SquareMatrix.html) or orthogonal matrices)...

Ehehehe... *sheepish grin* What are you all looking at?

K will shut up and stop being a math geek now. :-P

And good points both.

I wonder if this is true for media of expression other than theatre and writing? It must be, to some extent, but I'm not qualified to talk about the artist's pain in the visual or choreographic genres. I think that in the melodic (and the programmatic, for that matter) it's tied in with creativity being equated with originality. A case in point that Suri might not have had in mind: Deep Blue's detractors lauded Kasparov for his "recognizably human" style of play and (some of them) denounced Deep Blue as an entity that "played obviously like a machine".

Kasparov himself said something to the effect that Deep Blue had reached the godlike level of anticipation and was challenging but inhuman in that regard. So, here we have a chess-playing comptuer that is capable of drawing or defeating the human world champion in tournament play, but is sent home because it's too unfeeling for its opponents. (I'm not being facetious here: I don't ascribe anthromorphic features to systems of Deep Blue's limited complexity, but neither do I chalk it up to sour grapes as some computational apologists or meta-critics would.)

--
Banazir

[agamisu.livejournal.com]

Hmm, okay. Going back and analysing my own work, I think the mining may be subconscious rather than overt and deliberate. That is, apart from one particular book which just won't sell because the bloody thing is too dark. On the short fiction side, however, it's a bit of a different story (hah). In that sense, I can't help but write what I am -- it informs my word choice, the pictures in my head and the way I think about stuff.

[lagilman]

Having read the book that hasn't sold (yet) I can say that you mine the pain for emotional result. Without a doubt.

I've never really thought about if the using is subconscious or not -- for me, at least, sometimes it is and sometimes it jsut appears in the writing and when I'm done I think "oh. So that's where all that was coming from in such a bleeding rush."

I have noted that if I say "I'm going to write about x" (as therapy, as Unwrecked mentioned), then while I may feel better, the story usually doesn't satisfy/sell. And I hate wasting my time on something that isn't going to sell. Call me crass, call me commercial, call me paying my bills.

[girasole.livejournal.com]

I don't write fiction. I identify myself as a writer, and I write reviews, criticism, research, essays, etc. But I don't write fiction. Never have. I sometimes _edit_ fiction, and I am pretty good at that. Whatever impulse it takes to create a story, I don't seem to have that.

I understand Z's dilemma. I think you do have to reach deeply to write stories that while they may not be real, are true. Sometimes in order to do that, you have to go places inside yourself you don't like very much, or are scared of. Or you have to codify and crystallize a response to a person or event that on the whole you don't really want to know that well. If you are going to be a fiction writer, if you are going to be a good writer, I think you have to go there. If not, you can still be a writer, and sometimes you might write good stuff, but it will never be true the way good fiction is true.

And if I might digress for just a moment, I think that if you write -- anything -- you have to read a lot, too. One of the most boring mistakes new writers make is not having read much in the area they are writing in. Somehow they seem to think this makes their prose purer. What it usually means is that they have denied themselves a whole universe of background riches.

So saith the book reviewer. I will stop now. Laundry (and the Yankees) call.

[janni.livejournal.com]

What I find is I don't set out to use a particular bit of past experience or emotion, but the story finds what it needs, and I need to be open to that. I need to find whatever bit of emotion of my own comes near enough that I can use it to extrapolate my characters and their emotions from the inside, rather than without.

I'm pretty pitiless, too, about using whatever I need to. An "I can't go there" reaction almost always seems to mean that that's precisely where I need to go.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I also think that we're not always aware of what pains we might be resurrecting when we write. Sometimes I start a story and realize only weeks later which trauma incited it.

[bluziggy.livejournal.com]

you are a deeply compassionate person -- it jumps off the page. it's obvious you've been hurt in this life and maybe in past lives (wink), and therefore may be the reason you feel the sensitivity you do. If one never feels pain, they can't feel compassion - impossible. You're lucky to admit it and get it out when you can -- even though you probably feel like you're somewhere between madness and a lobotomy most of the time....