I am not a risk taker.
Just this week I threw out a carton of sour cream that was one day past its shelf date. (How does sour cream spoil, anyway? Does it get more sour?) My passwords are updated so regularly I'm not even sure what half of them are anymore. Come to think of it, I may actually be the only person in the Metro area that has never jaywalked in D.C., merged on the shoulder to get through Beltway traffic, or driven over the Bay Bridge.
But writing is all about risk.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
It doesn’t help that I tend to write stories about heavy topics—the things that work their way into the deepest part of my heart and don’t come out until I find a way to write about them. This is a short list of subjects that have reared their ugly heads in my stories:
Gun violence
Sexual assault
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Chronic pain
Poverty
Alzheimer's disease
Racism
Sensory Processing Disorder
Infertility
LGBTQIA+ discrimination
Domestic violence
Some of these issues are things that have personally affected me and shaped my life, and some of them aren't. I think it's slightly easier to write about the issues that I haven't experienced firsthand--but only slightly. When my characters face issues I've dealt with myself, I have to work harder to stay in my fictional world. It can be a huge challenge to purposefully put my characters through situations that I would never want anyone else to experience.
When I'm writing about issues that I haven't experienced, on the other hand, I constantly worry about whether I'm being accurate. I do a lot of research and reflecting before I ever start drafting, but can that even come close to having walked in those shoes myself?
Like I said, this is tough stuff--and it should be. If I found any of it easy to write about or think about, I wouldn't be doing my job.
“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”
We don't live in a safe world. That knowledge has led to so much fear, and at the same time, I've seen it give rise to so much courage. Even in me, a person who won't eat extra-sour sour cream. I believe we all have some small way of staring down our fears and turning them into connections instead.
Mine is writing. What’s yours?
