Wordplay

Writing is treacherous business, fraught with fear and doubt on every side. Am I any good? Will I get published? Will I get good reviews? Will I sell any books? But, perhaps, the most inherent danger of the writing life is the necessary baring of our souls to the world. Writing, at its most basic level, will always be the story of the author himself. No matter how far removed the subject matter, no matter how diverse the cast of characters, the story is always, always, always about the author. And, to all but the most narcissistic, that’s a dad-blamed scary thought.


Janet Fitch, author of the best-selling novel White Oleander said it perhaps as well as anyone: “Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don’t want people to know. ... You have to work as deeply as you can to give the reader something worth reading, but you’re also showing things about yourself that you’re not pleased with. It’s your flaws, not your strengths that go down in the depths of your books. You’re exposed, like dreaming you’re naked in a public building.” (quoted in “Into the Light” by Mary Curran-Hackett, Writer’s Digest April 2007) 

The best novelists are those that can tap into their characters’ psyches at a primal level. They can reveal a character’s innermost fears, his secret fantasies, his darkest sins. To reveal these things, to bring them to life in a way that will resonate with readers on a deeply human level, means the author must understand and even identify with these feelings to at least some extent.


A writer is an actor. A one-man show. For two hours every afternoon, when I sit down to write, I become my characters. I am the megalomaniac bad guy, I am the damsel in distress, I am the knight in shining armor. To make these characters live and breath in three dimensions, I must become them, I must understand them and the issues they are facing. When my hero limps in front of a firing squad, I am standing with him. When my bad guy orders his army into battle, I am shouting alongside him.


But the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Actions, on the page or in the theater, are just actions. I can go through the motions of trauma and chaos right alongside my characters, but that hardly means I am actually fulfilling them. My hero may be running through No Man’s Land on a German battlefield, while I am safely perched on my chair, feet propped against my printer, typing away in my warm house. It’s in the emotions, not the actions, that a writer truly gives himself away.


When I write of a character’s deep fear of failure, when I tell of her fear churning and churning in her gut until all that’s left is anger, and when I show her lashing out in her anger and in her fear, I am telling something of myself. I am not this character. I am not consumed in this fear-cum-anger. But, somewhere in my own self, I have found the latent potential for this emotion, and, in printing it on the page, I have revealed that potential to the world.


Anyone who has ever written more than two paragraphs in a row has experienced the blast of fear that comes when someone else reads his work. He waits, sitting on his hands to keep from chewing his nails, cold sweat touching his scalp, fidgeting and squirming (mentally, if not physically) as he waits for the scales of opinion to tip in favor of either commendation or criticism. We, of course, fear that our work, our words, our craft will not measure up. But, I think, an even more inherent fear is that of rejection on a deeper level. When someone rejects our writing, he is, in a sense, rejecting us. When someone tells us he doesn’t like a character, he’s telling us he doesn’t like a part of us. And, very naturally, that hurts like heck.


Writing is not for sissies. I suppose you could get by without ever really pouring yourself onto the page, without really sharing your own personal slice of the human experience. Perhaps you might even be able to get yourself published. Certainly, I’ve read plenty of novels that don’t seem to share much of their authors’ souls. But the good books, the really good books, the ones I lay in bed at night thinking about, the ones I can quote even years after I’ve read them, the ones that have impacted my thinking and challenged my soul—those are the books that can only be written by an author who is willing to spill his guts onto the page.


Is it still risky? You bet your birthday it is. Are there going to be people who misunderstand your message? People who disapprove? People who slap you in the face with rejection? Absolutely. But, if you’re called as a writer, you cannot let that stand your way. Don’t short-change yourself—or your readers. If you have a gift, don’t prune it, don’t censor it. You cannot fill someone else without emptying yourself. Write yourself ragged, don’t hold back, and you’ll find that honesty, in writing as in all else, is the best policy—and the surest path to success.

Story by K.M. Weiland

Tags: Risks