BY PENNY FREEMAN
How many times have you said this to yourself (or someone else): I just can’t write today. I’ve got stuff going on. And you can’t—not really. You can’t work on your current project when your whole mind/heart/soul is consumed with your stuff. So, don’t. But neither should you let it go to waste.
And, then there are all those movies and TV shows where the writer is sitting before their keyboard, hammering away, going 90 miles a minute, with tears streaming down there faces. (They’re out there. I promise, but I couldn’t find one to share). Maybe someone else comes into the room and says, “Hey. Are you all right?” And they sob, “I’m just writing.” Then, every once in a while, they’ll wag their head and wail, “Oh, this is good. It’s so good.”
Admit it. You’ve done this. You’ve made yourself cry. Or, you’ve made someone else ask you why you’re so angry or depressed, and you say, “I’m just writing this scene . . .”
Writers who are guilty of this—or lucky enough to experience this—are doing one thing right: they’re using their stuff. They’ve dug down deep within themselves and found those raw emotions that they have experienced and perhaps suppressed, but are allowing themselves to express through their writing. Now, this is no guarantee that their writing won’t be overwrought and florid, that readers won’t be able to choke it down with a spoon, but, they’re making it real.
So, back to those days when you’ve got stuff and you’re sure you can’t write. Fine. Don’t work on your WIP, but do write. Even if you just scrawl a few lines in a journal or notebook, write it down enough so you remember the edge later. “Ergh! My boss is such a jerk!! I can’t stand that she . . .” You get the idea. Usually, because you are a writer, once you get started, it takes a while to peter out. And, more often than not, when it does, you feel better and more able to deal with your stuff.
True confession: sometimes writers tell me about their stuff. That’s good. I don’t mind. The den mother in me empathizes, commiserates, wishes to high heaven they weren’t going through this rough patch, and sometimes offers a bit of advice, or at least a virtual pat on the back and a hug. The editor in me turns into Snidely Whiplash, dry-washes my hands, and chortles with malevolent glee, “the better to write stuff with, my dear.”
Finally, a real-life example (and more true confessions): my mother and I had a rocky relationship, falling out on more than one occasion. So, when she died at the age of eighty, I went dry-eyed for days—and felt guilty about it.
My siblings asked me to write her obituary, and that was fine. I can put names and dates together in an entirely clinical and emotionally detached fashion. Just don’t ask me to write her eulogy. I told them specifically, I don’t want to write her eulogy. So, of course, they volunteered me to write and deliver her eulogy.
Long story short: after wrestling with it literally down to the hour of her funeral, I wrote what I wanted to write, not what others wanted me to write or say, and got up to deliver it in defiance. I didn’t cry when I wrote it. I haven’t cried since, but up there in front of one hundred people, reading what I wrote aloud, I blubbered like a baby. I very nearly shoved the paper at my husband and sat down. But, I didn’t.
Funny thing. Nobody got angry. (Dang!) Everybody loved it. Everybody told me it was exactly what needed to be said. And, it’s probably one of the better things I’ve written. If you really want, you can read it here.
Can I write about troubled parent/child relationships. Ummm, yes. Been there. Done that
Moral of the story: write down your stuff, even your most painful stuff. The events, relationships, and sensibilities that you personally experience and write about are those which will ring most true to your reader. That doesn’t mean to say you have to air all your family’s dirty laundry, but utilizing a tidbit here, a circumstance there, a universal emotion that you might not realize is so, you can create your world of fiction and populate it with people that become real.
Editor-in-chief Penny Freeman lives, writes, edits, and markets from her home in southeast Texas. She currently supervises several editorial projects. Her next release, Legends and Lore: An Anthology of Mythic Proportions, is slated for release October 15, 2014.