How do you write what causes you pain?

For me, it depends. I can take a simple childhood or adult experience and create a story around it, whether it was a painful or joyous, to the point where people will ask, "Did that really happen to you?" When I get that question, I know I have done my job.

On the other hand, I cannot bring myself to write about when my mother died of cancer when I was 23, in either novel or memoir form. It is way too painful.

It's okay to listen in, but you've got to participate- after all, it is your thread. Please share your thoughts.

I have many, many times incorporated my own painful experiences into my manuscripts. Not only has it contributed to the story, but it's helped me examine the situation, understand my feelings about it and place in it, and work through it. Self-help in its most basic form.

C.J. Rockwell said:

This really isn't a general question, but since most of what I post now ends up here anyway, why fight it?

After another fiasco with my last thread, I'll ask as simple a question I'm capable of.

For years I've tried to write MG novels, but I can't attain the quality I want.

So many suggested I change what I wrote, but still be something important to me.

Problem is, to do that would mean writing about the things I've fought to avoid for years. I'm not going to say what they are unless someone asks, otherwise it'll just look like I'm being defensive, but trust me, these are the kinds of things I can't put a fun twist on.

Plus, these stories demand I write them for YA, and I've never felt very comfortable with most books for that age group, even when I was one.

I wrote what I did to escape my pain, despite knowing what a hard sell it is, and this change would mean writing about things I still struggle to deal with.

I know many of you have written about the tough times in your life, either as memoirs or novels where you know about the subject matter than you wish you did. How did you do it? Were you glad to do it? Even when it was hard?

This time, I'm not going to reply to anyone's comments. I'll just listen. That seems to be the only way I can avoid the mean way I've been acting.

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CJ,

a couple thoughts:

1. you're going to have to thicken your skin a bit; this is a rough sport. In another thread someone wanted percentages for first novels that are accepted, while that has tons of variables the closest we cme for an across-the-board number was WELL below 1%. Good luck with that, and I mean that, but again, it's a rough sport.

2. I've heard a number of things about writing, and I thought a lot of them were self-serving, artsy bullshit. Some are. However, I will say you don;t have the luxury of making your stories, you write what you have, not what you want. I couldn't write "gone with the wind" or "The Hunt for Red October", although I could produce 400-600 pages of utter dogshit with similar themes, because it isn't the story I have in me. I think of the story as being a lot like a train and I'm the conductor--there are plenty of things I can do to change speed, course, etc., and I can certainly tweak and nudge my story, but I cannot change it 180 degrees. I might be able to add a love interest to a suspense story, or to let a character live when I initially thought he would not, but I can't just say one day "Watership Down" is hot again, I'm gonna write a bunny-book" or "Twilight is still hot, I'm writin' me a vampire romance for teens". The train would derail. I can write what comes to me, I can't make someone else's idea my own if it isn't.

In light of #2, are animal stories, or YA for that matter, what comes to you, honestly, or are they what you're shooting for because of market, relative lack of need to plumb your own psyche, etc.? Writing can be hard, miserable, cathartic, and depressing. I killed a girl who was a version of my wife and spent half a day in my office hoping like hell nobody came in to see me crying--that wasn't a hell of a lot of fun, but hopefully it also worked out on the page. I could not have said "f' this, I'm writin' about the President's teenage daughter falling for the hunky Prince of Spain in a teen comedy" just because I found it less miserable work.

Maybe, and I'm only saying maybe; it is something you need to look inward and consider, you aren't actually cut out to tell animal stories after all. maybe that's part of your problem. Maybe you need to cast your net elsewhere, or maybe you're not ready to and/or you need not to.

I've written scenes that left me so upset I was shaking and queasy, and definitely ones that made me cry. Not only is it, as Maryn and OFG have said, useful in a cathartic/desensitizing way, but I think some of my best writing has been connected, vaguely or directly, to some of my worst moments. (With judicious editing afterward, of course.)

C.J. Rockwell said:

How did you do it? Were you glad to do it? Even when it was hard?

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1) I just plowed through it. For me, scenes with high emotional tension have their own momentum, so after a while I can pretty much just let myself be carried by it.

2) Yes, definitely.

it can be cathartic but it also helps when you think about it, Maryn mentioned, fictionalizing.

I'm not sure if you're talking about the pain of writing what you don't want to write or the pain of writing about some tough time in your life...?

for the first, i suggest you MUST be interested in various subjects even if you don't think you are. think of things you read and just like tv shows or when you put a book down for the night or those supporting characters who pique your interest. you imagin and wonder what if. you day dream. that's were my newest WIP came from, a what if day dream that wouldn't leave me alone. force your self to thing in what ifs and day dream a bit.

if it's the second. i try not to upset myself. you can avoid things that make you uncomfortable if they don't detract form your character. you shouldn't write about a girl who's teased for being fat and never actually acknowledge her feeling before and after... but you could write about a girl who's fat and happy. or sisters where one if fat and one is thin and they're jealous of each other. that could be emotional or humorous or both or neither.

i guess, the long and the short of it is that you don't have to writ what causes you pain or you can throw yourself into it or you can tip toe around it.

good luck.

C.J. Rockwell said:

Problem is, to do that would mean writing about the things I've fought to avoid for years. I'm not going to say what they are unless someone asks, otherwise it'll just look like I'm being defensive, but trust me, these are the kinds of things I can't put a fun twist on.

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There are books that deal with serious subjects without putting a "fun twist" on them.

It's also possible to write for catharsis without trying to publish, and to write for publication as a separate endeavor.

Lara said:

There are books that deal with serious subjects without putting a "fun twist" on them.

It's also possible to write for catharsis without trying to publish, and to write for publication as a separate endeavor.

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I agree. I was actually going to suggest this in the thread you alluded to but wasn't sure it was something you'd consider doing. It sounds like you've already been thinking about it though so I'll second the idea. Painful subjects aren't easy to write about but they can be a great release and a good way to expel the anger and frustration you've been feeling.

Hope you find a solution. My cousin took 10 years to confront a painful subject but finally wrote about it and found it helpful. Sometimes it's the only way we can move on.

C.J. Rockwell said:

I wrote what I did to escape my pain, despite knowing what a hard sell it is, and this change would mean writing about things I still struggle to deal with.

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I'm curious why you feel you have to write about painful events or topics from your own life in order to improve the quality of your writing. Because writing about experiences that have painful emotional resonance with you won't automatically improve your writing--though it will no doubt help you heal and learn from those experiences.

Writing as an escape is perfectly okay. And it sounds like that's what you want to do, since you talk about putting a "fun twist" on events.

Your humor has undoubtedly been shaped by the painful experiences that seem to be haunting you. Humor may be your way of coping with, and understanding, pain.

I agree that you should write about things that are important to you, but that doesn't mean what you're doing now is wrong or not good enough. I suggest that you examine why you're not satisfied with the quality of your writing. Is it really lacking in emotion, particularly the dark and difficult emotions associated with painful experiences? Tapping into painful memories can be a cathartic experience in itself, and a rich source of inspiration and raw material for art, but I caution against doing so with the assumption that it will fix the problems with your writing.

Leah Raeder said:

I'm curious why you feel you have to write about painful events or topics from your own life in order to improve the quality of your writing. Because writing about experiences that have painful emotional resonance with you won't automatically improve your writing--though it will no doubt help you heal and learn from those experiences.

Writing as an escape is perfectly okay. And it sounds like that's what you want to do, since you talk about putting a "fun twist" on events.

Your humor has undoubtedly been shaped by the painful experiences that seem to be haunting you. Humor may be your way of coping with, and understanding, pain.

I agree that you should write about things that are important to you, but that doesn't mean what you're doing now is wrong or not good enough. I suggest that you examine why you're not satisfied with the quality of your writing. Is it really lacking in emotion, particularly the dark and difficult emotions associated with painful experiences? Tapping into painful memories can be a cathartic experience in itself, and a rich source of inspiration and raw material for art, but I caution against doing so with the assumption that it will fix the problems with your writing.

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Yup. You said it better than I could.

The more I think on this topic, the more I wonder... It's different for everyone, but I think when I first started writing I stuck closer to my personal "Big Topic of Doom." Then later I began to be able to be fully engaged in writing things that weren't about my personal Topic of Doom. I submit that thought into the wild, here, for what it's worth.

As a whole separate topic, getting an agent and getting published is this crazy long-odds game that you have to approach in a certain way, and even if one is a complete and total pro about it -- an absolute machine who makes no mistakes and comes charging right out of the gate -- even then, just based on the odds, it will usually take a while before you hit the bullseye and land an agent/get published.

I don't write about the painful stuff in my life; I write about the things that didn't happen to me because I made (or didn't make) the choices which caused/prevented them (That's the line I'm sticking with, anyway. In the event of publication, there is no way on this planet I'm admitting to anything in my MS.). It keeps a measure of control over things while still being able to think over the issues and it enables me to think about the ways we interlock as human beings and how different people see a single type of behavior in different ways.

As for putting a fun take on tragic subjects, I think that is always a mistake. There are some jokes which shouldn't be made. However, you can juxtapose comedy and tragedy and, if you do it well, it only makes the final end more potent.
The final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, for instance. It doesn't dilute the events or attempt to make light of the terrible things which happened during WW1, but it is quite brilliant and genuinly funny and the emotions sit beside each other in equal measure.
To combine tragedy and comedy, I think it's important to be clear on where the joke lies and to give the subject complete honesty. If there is a greater portrait of the post-suicidal than Steve Carrel (sp?) in Little Miss Sunshine, I haven't seen it. That is how to do it.

Theo81 said:

As for putting a fun take on tragic subjects, I think that is always a mistake. There are some jokes which shouldn't be made. However, you can juxtapose comedy and tragedy and, if you do it well, it only makes the final end more potent..

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Yeah, but part of me wants to say that there are just no rules about this stuff. I've read so many books that made me think, Wow, I didn't think that could be done, but that writer did it.

I just do it because, to me, my life experience, the good, the bad, the pleasant, and the painful, are what writing is all about.

"Write what you know" is, I believe, the best advice in the world. It's just misunderstood. It means you use your life experience, all of it, to bridge the natural gap between you and your readers.

I've never had a problem writing about the painful, unpleasant perts of my life. Just the opposite. Without this, fiction is dry, dead, unbelievable. There are millions who can write well, but fail because they either have nothing to say, or are afraid to say it.

Stephen King pooh-poohs it, but many a psychologist believes he's writing about the same traumatic childhood experience over in over, in form after form. The one where a childhood friend was killed by a train while King was playing with him. To me, it makes perfect sense.

Putting a fun twist on painful experience is one way to write about them, but certainly not the only way. Telling them just like they happened, whether in actuality or metaphorically, is extremely effective.

Really, what good are these painful, traumatic times unless you learn from them, learn to use them for your own betterment?

Jamesaritchie said:

"Write what you know" is, I believe, the best advice in the world. It's just misunderstood. It means you use your life experience, all of it, to bridge the natural gap between you and your readers.

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*note. No sleep. Spelling awful.

I've always taken it to mean 'wrote what you know about people' and, lawks how egotistical would it ne to wrote about yourself every time? But to put yourself in another's shoes while referencing yourself and what you know/feel/understand? Absofuckinglutely.

None of my characters are loopy (I am) except one. That one IS hard to write, Bu I do it a chunk at a time. It;s harder. It even harder because his moments are like mine. But the character closest to me? Complete blast to write. Me without my problems, but with others. What I would do if I a) was not loopy and b) lived where she did

For me half the fun of writing is that I get to be someone else. The point is, to get that voice, that agents want, to do have to BE that someone else, at least in your words. I actually become them..YMMV on that. But, you thing us, you are not you when you write, Yes, it should soun like you wrote it, with word chocies etc. The characters should sound like THEM. WIth their own esxperiences, biases, memories, not yours.

I am almost certainly not making sense. I need to sleep. A lot.

Actually, no one told you to stop writing middle grade. They advised you to try something other than a talking animal story. This doesn't mean you have to write dark and gritty. All it means is trying a human point-of-view character.

For example, the story about a girl who rescues a stray cat. It'd be a cute and fuzzily story still, and it's still about animals, but it's told from the point-of-view of the child.

You've created this divide where talking animal stories can only be light and escapist, and human stories can only be dark and gritty. You can have dark and gritty talking animals and light and escapist humans. You don't have to try dark, but it would benefit you to have a go at humans. I like writing from non-human points-of-view too... but the market is a lot smaller than it is for human characters. So I write a bit of both.

I guess I'm an emotional masochist, I enjoy writing was is/has caused me pain. For me its like therapy, which is funny considering I've never had any/refused to put up with it. Its easy to write what you know, and though I do not make my characters at all into me, I do give them a few things I've been through, or something to that extent, but most of the time they deal with it a lot better/worse than myself.

So, how do I write what causes me pain? Very easily.

Lara said:

There are books that deal with serious subjects without putting a "fun twist" on them.

It's also possible to write for catharsis without trying to publish, and to write for publication as a separate endeavor.

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Yeah -- who the heck says you have to put a fun twist on what you write? I know quirky/fun fiction is popular, but it's not the only way to write. I SELDOM put a happy spin on my writing -- nearly everything I write has a sad ending, or at least a bittersweet ending that is heavy on the "bitter."

As for how you write it...well, you just do. You just have to work yourself up to the point where you don't care whether people read these dark things you've kept inside yourself. Or you have to decide that it's worth it for you to express these things, that the value of honest expression outweighs the value of keeping it to yourself.

Life isn't all fun twists. Sometimes life sucks. It's okay to write about that, and to be honest about it.

Polenth said:

You've created this divide where talking animal stories can only be light and escapist, and human stories can only be dark and gritty. You can have dark and gritty talking animals and light and escapist humans. You don't have to try dark, but it would benefit you to have a go at humans. I like writing from non-human points-of-view too... but the market is a lot smaller than it is for human characters. So I write a bit of both.

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Yeah! Er -- you have read Watership Down, right? A Black Fox Running? Duncton Wood? One For Sorrow, Two For Joy? The Heavenly Horse from the Outermost West? Silverhair? The White Bone (talk about dark and gritty....)? The Plague Dogs, for god's sake?

Of course, all these are talking animal stories aimed at adult readers, but my point stands. There is a lot of dark and gritty in the talking animal genres -- maybe more than there is lighthearted fluff. Some YA/MG examples that are heavy on the darkness and grit: Mossflower (and most of the rest of the Redwall books) Firebringer, the Ratha series, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.

I am a HUGE fan of talking animal fiction -- I've got a Watership Down tattoo, in fact. That's how huge a fan I am. But it is hard to sell. You really need to be savvy and possibly a bit lucky, too. I pitched an idea for an adult talking animal book to my agent and she told me, "Wellll, if you feel you really NEED to write it, go for it...but it'd be darn near impossible to sell until later in your career." It's never going to be a bad move to start out with human characters for your first few books and then move to the animal fables.

But keep writing them on the side. They're often the ones that resonate with readers the most.

i absolutely love digging in to the meat and pulling out a vein. it gives me a high.

KTC said:

i absolutely love digging in to the meat and pulling out a vein. it gives me a high.

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Here here, good sir. Cheers.

It's easier than you think. Just start writing, it'll be cathartic. I'm not just saying that because I think so, I'm saying it because I'm doing it. My WIP is about 3 siblings in the aftermath of their brother being murdered when he interrupted a serial killer in a wrong place wrong time scenario.

My own brother was murdered last November when he was at a friends house taking a shower because his plumbing was being worked on and found himself in the middle of a home invasion. When he came to the aid of the woman who lived there he was shot through the aorta. Died within seconds.

If I can take the painful aftermath of that and write about it, then I'm sure you can write about whatever you've experienced. It actually makes the writing part easier and more realistic. I suspect that is why they say "Write what you know."

C.J. Rockwell said:

I know many of you have written about the tough times in your life, either as memoirs or novels where you know about the subject matter than you wish you did. How did you do it? Were you glad to do it? Even when it was hard?

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When I came home from the first Persian Gulf War, I was very angry at something that happened over there. At the core of it was a huge betrayal of trust across many people I was supposed to be able to trust, and I had to work with them again, pretending like nothing had happened. I wanted to write about it and bleed off some of the poison--but I couldn't. I was still in the army, and they would've taken a dim view of that. Then I realized I could write fantasy stories. They were fiction, they were set in another place and time, and it wasn't about the army. I let the writing control the direction I went, which was fantasy about war. The stories were dark, but they never touched the actual incident.

Twenty years later, and I still haven't written anything specifically about what happened. I actually think I'm only getting to the point where I might be able to. I've heard that war vets write their books 20 years after the fact because that's when they can have enough distance to tell the story. I think there's some truth in that. Yet, aspects of what happened comes into what I write. My last story was about betrayal. My current story is about betrayal. My next story is about betrayal. Only one was set in a war zone, and that was my cowriter's idea, not mine.

Don't think that you're only limited to write in middle grade or that you have to write about what happened. Let your muse guide you in the direction you need to go and see where it takes you. Trust it to do what you need it to do.

I dont know what you went though as a child so i dont know if this information will help you, but i'll tell you what i went through and what i did about it. Hope it helps some how.

For a long while now I've written a series, I've written since i was 12 and writing was my way of escaping my horrible life at the time. In grade school i was horribly bullied, like beyond the simple one kid in the class called me names stuff, i mean like the entire class tormenting me daily for 5 years, living in a constant hell, kind of bullying.

Anyway I wrote my series, where I was a character, I created my own little world where I had friends, and I was special, and well I wrote about the life I wish I had and the people I wish I knew. For a long while it sustained me. I still write my series because I'm in love with it and its become my sort of safety mechanism for keeping myself sane when things go bad in life.

But I'm 20 going on 21 and still have issues because of the things that have happened to me in grade school. Its the kind of past that haunts me daily and even in college I cant seem to simply "Forget about it". Point is I never got therapy for this shit or anything and my grandmom one day was talking to me about it and brought up a good point, she said "Well you love to write, you should write about what happened to you."

Naturally I thought that was a stupid idea. Why would I put myself through that sort of pain reliving it all? I wrote Horror/Thriller books not drama and all that stuff, hell I didnt even read books like that. Why would I want to write a book about how pathetic I was and how even after i graduated I was still haunted with what they put me through? What kind of book would that be? But as i thought about it more the idea came to me... it didnt have to be an autobiography, what if i wrote about what i wish i did to all those bastards that tormented me. What if I told my story and in the end, unlike in real life, they would get what they deserved?

In November when i found out what NaNo was i figured it would be the perfect chance to give this idea a shot. I didnt really have an idea other then I didnt want it to be "me" in the book, which was a first because "I'm" in my series. So i came up which a character, who was really me in every way except her name, I slightly changed the names of all my bullies, but if they were to read the book it would only take them a split second to figure out who every one was. I ended up writing a book where there were 2 bullied kids, a boy and a girl who both found each other got sick of being picked on and killed or ruined the lives of all there bullies then ran away together and lived happily ever after. (Had to add my horror element, plus get out all my anger)

I used actually stuff that happened to me when i wrote about there pasts. That was the hardest part because i had to relive it but in a way i think it was good for me, because i finally got it out of my head it put it on paper. And the pain was lessened because it was happening to my character not "me". What really helped me was the made up parts where my characters finally got revenge. Killing some and completely ruining the lives of others who hurt them. Actually it made me really happy writing those parts, as horrible as it sounds, but hey, at least I didnt do it in real life right?

The books still not finished yet but, that was because school work got in the way then i got more interested in my first love, my series, so i put it on hold. But honestly now i feel much better that i got almost all of it out. The book i will say is horribly violent, a little immoral, and very very sad but i honestly still want to finish it and get it published. Why? Because i think getting my story out there will not only help me get past it all but help others who might of went through the same thing, just so they know they aren't alone. Might also teach bullies to what out for who they pick on.

Anyway not sure if this will help you at all. But all i can say is writing about what happened to you can be very... therapeutic, it was for me at least.