Writing is All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt

Nobody said writing would be easy, but I wish there had been a disclaimer early on somewhere. Sure, 'Writing is easy...open a vein and bleed' is all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. (Boy, that just didn't come out right, but there it is.)

When my daughter was in elementary school, she experienced her first loss of a pet.  Her beloved cat, Snipper, was hit by a car one day.  She cried like her tender little heart was broken.  I held her and we both cried. Then, in the midst of her sobs, she pulled away and ran for a pad of paper and a pencil.  To my amazement, she began to journal her feelings as she cried.  I later remembered that her teacher had given them journals at school and encouraged them to record their feelings.  Something in the experience must have been cathartic for her.  She filled pages with abandon until she was spent, with all her love for Snipper boldly scribbled on the pad.

I wish I could write like that.  The first draft raw and searing with emotion.  The trouble is that I clean up the bad things before they get onto the paper.  I don't really want to remember them.  I want to move past them to the place where I'm recovered and can look back with compassion, comfortably removed a safe distance away, to dust my hands and experience the relief.  Once there, I sure don't want to go back. 

When I was doing research for Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon I was fortunate to find a mother who was willing to share her story of losing three young children to Niemann-Pick disease.  She taught me a thing or two about courage.  She willingly revisited that dark place in the hope that people would be drawn to God. Our phone interviews were sometimes cut short when she became overwhelmed with memories, and it often took her days to recover, but she was willing to open her heart and private pain.  My story wasn't her story, but much of her experience became my protagonist's experience.  I am grateful to her and amazed by her courage.  I wasn't sure if she would be able to read the book when it was done, but she did (finally) and was pleased with it.

I have a theory that fiction writers are particularly sensitive and this is the reason we shy away from 'getting real'.  It's doubly hard for us to take a step back from the pain and maintain perspective.   But the best writers are brave. They walk right up to it and poke it with a stick.  That doesn't mean they won't get hurt.

Have you connected with a character's pain in a way that was healing to you?

Define Your Motivation

If my post today borders on the morbid, it's only because Latayne's post on near-death experiences on Wednesday started the juices flowing.  It's amazing how many water-related mishaps readers have in common, and I can completely relate. I remember swimming in the Chesapeake Bay and getting just a bit too far from shore, clutching my friend's inner tube and her screaming "Help!" because I was pulling her under with me.  I felt both desperate fear and humiliation, wishing she would stop calling attention to us, which is, or course, what saved us both.

Later, as an adult, I faced not just the possibility of death, but ran the whole gamut of 'what-ifs,' 'whys' and 'why me-s' when a routine mammogram revealed a suspicious shadow that turned out to be cancer.  That was 14 years ago. I'm grateful that I had the presence of mind to journal my experience.  That, and hindsight, have helped me to sort things out a bit.

I never really questioned why I should be the one to get sick.  Rain falls on the just and the unjust and I'm nobody special. My 'why me' concern was more of a 'why me now.'  My kids were in elementary school.  It was rotten timing.  But that fact in itself was incentive to stay positive and keep things as normal as possible at home while facing treatment. 

It's interesting that when people find out you've been diagnosed, they feel compelled to share all the negative things they know about cancer.  I don't know why. Everyone knows somebody whose experience was off the charts.  It can be pretty disheartening.  But the Lord spoke to me through my sister-in-law, who called me out of the blue and said, "Don't take everyone's horror stories as your own. Your experience can be very different."  Her husband's story was different.  As it turned out, mine was, too.

On the positive side, the experience resulted in my first by-line.  Because of that nugget of wisdom she shared with me, and of what I learned about God's great love, I was able to write an upbeat personal experience article for Coping With Cancer magazine and saw my name in print for the first time.  Later, I was able to share about my experience with women who were facing challenges in their lives, and not necessarily cancer. 

So I'm finally getting to the point of this post.  In my journal during that time, there is a raw observation of how I felt when the realization finally hit me that my future was uncertain.  I wrote that I felt like I was standing in a long hallway and all the doors were shut to me.  I was completely alone with no way out.  I knew that my family could support and encourage me, but they could not experience my illness for me.   (This is the morbid part, but stay with me)  At that point, I fully realized that we come into the world alone and when we go out, we stand alone before God. 

We don't like to think about that.  At least, I don't.  I think most of us largely define ourselves by the relationships we have with others.  I'm Don's wife and the mother of  Zephr and Galadriel (fake names so I won't hear about it later).  I could tell you about my  90-year-old mother and my sisters and on and on, and the people I work and worship with.  We find comfort in associations, safety in numbers and all that.  When we're faced with the realization that we alone will answer for our actions and inactions, it can scare the heck out of us or light a fire under us.  Maybe both.

I'm not suggesting that we get to heaven by what we do or don't do.  The Bible is clear that Jesus paid the price for my sin and I am grateful.  But I sure don't want to embarrass myself or let Him down, or shuffle my feet and stare at the ground when He asks what I've done with my talents.

So, whatever we feel God has given us to do, are we doing it?  As writers, if we feel called to write and have received confirmation that we're on the right track, are we seriously applying ourselves?  Some say they have a passion to write, but passion burns out.  What then? We each must clearly define our motivation in order to stick with it through the dry spells and the occasional disappointing review and the poor sales figure, and it doesn't take a near-death experience. If it's clearly a calling, it can't be treated as a hobby.  I need to be reminded of my motivation from time to time in order to stay on track.  What is your motivation for writing, or for whatever God has called you to do?  We'd love to hear.

P.S. This is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Go get a mammogram ;-)