Writing to keep Afloat

I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember. When I was around seven, I wrote a small book about a cat. I don’t remember the details of the story, but the process of cutting out the pieces of construction paper and writing a line on each page accompanied by a picture remains etched in my memory. It must have been the first book I wrote, but unfortunately, it has been lost to time.

I really don’t know why I have always been drawn to words and especially novels. I was able to read early and reached a college age reading level before I left elementary school. It seems to have always been a part of me, and now, at 30, I am learning how to let it flow out in a different way than I have been able to before.

In the past five years, I have written many many words on several different novels. I have learned so much through that work. I am able to craft characters, plots, settings, and sentences better than ever before. But somehow, that is not the thing that strikes me when I think of the writing discipline. It’s not the tempest of technique or the literary merit of thoughtful description. It’s not how compelling a character can be or how immersive a plot. It’s how writing has changed me and my perception of the world.

Writers have a unique and strange insight into the human condition. Like a therapist, we delve into how people think and feel, but unlike one, we make up personalities and people. It’s an odd activity to participate in. It forces you to empathize and disconnect from humanity at the same time. How else could we perfectly describe how our character feels when their mother dies, all while being the reason that the mother died in the first place?

We lovingly build up these people in our minds and on paper, and then we try to discover the greatest pain we can inflict upon them. Maybe that is why writers have a tendency to be strange. How could one not be strange when writing a delightful character like Frodo Baggins and then making him walk to Mordor? Or when writing about an eleven year old boy who first loses his parents and then is relentlessly pursued by evil until he is seventeen?

There must be some sanity in writers like LM Montgomery, who wrote a girl’s life out of poverty and despair and into beauty and love. But even Anne Shirley faces darkness and grief over the course of the Anne of Green Gables series. The only author I can think of who truly escapes this pattern is Jane Austen, and only in some of her novels. The best example is Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth Bennet, the main character, is truly raised up through the novel and receives an extravagant happily ever after.

It makes me wonder, why don’t all authors indulge their characters so. If we spend so much time empathizing with our characters, why don’t they all receive a happily ever after? I think the answer is catharsis.

Authors exist in the world, and so must their characters. Hardship, heartbreak, and disappointment lie around every corner, and writers must use their medium to survive their own lives. This results in characters who must work through tragedy and unfailing difficulty. Whether they do that with grace or anger is a reflection of the choice we all must make. It is unendingly cathartic to write a character who has gone through what you have.

I only understand my only grief in failure because I wrote a character that failed despite every assurance that he wouldn’t. I only understand hate because I wrote a character who hates with his whole heart. I only understand jealousy because I wrote a woman who became obsessed with the fortunes of her sister. I only understand love because I wrote a character who loved without exception.

It has been one of the joys of my life to explore emotions through this medium. How can we do that effectively if we only give characters the perfect lives or the perfect endings?

That is the secret way all writers must follow. We must bare all and feel all and then deal with the grief and woundedness that causes us.