What I talk about when I talk about writing
Writing fiction and writing about my life are entirely different processes for me. Here's why.
I wrote a novel back in 2004/2005 when my daughter was just months old. I was still nursing and on maternity leave when the character, India, started talking to me. I listened. All I did for weeks was nurse, tend to my daughter, cook, clean the house, go for long walks with the baby, fight with my daughter’s father and write write write. It was a dark time lined with magic.
Magic because I was a new mom and I had a daughter and the reality struck me as beautiful and strange because I barely spoke to my mom. I was so in awe of this baby who nursed so voraciously and stared at me with big brown curious eyes.
(I didn’t yet know that I this was the beginning of my healing journey.)
Dark because I was a new mom and it was so hard and made harder by her abusive father.
I wrote a book in that. If you asked me how, I would tell you I don’t know. I still don’t remember a lot of those days. I know that the only thing that kept me alive during that time was my daughter and my words.
That man told me one day: What you think? You think you gonna be a writer? You ain’t gonna be shit.
From that moment on, the story took on a different meaning: the book became the journey to freeing myself of him and his toxicity. I finished the book and left him a few months later.
If I’m honest, I’m not proud of the book though I once was.
This week a writer who’s taken several of my classes (I call these wonderful people repeat offenders) shared that she ordered my book. She posted on social media about how she couldn’t put it down. Even shared a pic of a page.
I clutched my pearls at all the adverbs. I haven’t read the book in so long. I don’t remember the last time I picked it up though I have a copy in my library. I’d even forgotten that I’d written about sopa in the book. (Making soups saved me when my brother died. I have a story about it here)
I’ve told people: I would never write a book like that again.
A writer once told me: If you’re not ashamed of a book you wrote long ago or don’t think about how you would change or improve it, you haven’t grown.
I wrote that book in desperation. I was drunk with creativity and breast milk. I did what I’d been doing since I was five and six and first climbed that plum tree in our backyard: I imagined a different world, a different life. This time I wrote it down. And it became a novel.
I don’t remember a lot of the process of writing that book. I was going thru so much. In hindsight I believe I disassociated for a lot of it, but I remember finishing the book, or at least the feeling that consumed me—I knew I was a writer. I’d proven it to myself. I’ve said it out loud since. And not in a whisper. With my whole chest.
Now I have to work on how I talk about the book and feel about this book. Of course I’d never write a book like that again. I was 30, still deeply traumatized, in an abusive relationship, still lost & unsure of where I was headed but certain by then that I was not going to do it in the situation I was in…
I’ve learned a lot about writing since then. I’ve studied craft obsessively, I’ve taken so many classes & workshops, I’ve written so many hundreds of thousands of words, dozens of essays, another novel, a play, a few short stories, some poems, even a few songs.
Here’s what I also learned about me: I’m an intuitive writer when I write fiction. I listen to the main character and I write what they tell me. I’ve done this with two novels and a few short stories (including Dollhead published in Smokelong Quarterly). This is not at all how it works for me in creative nonfiction.
Writing about my life is definitely a more wrenching, introspective and roil-my-insides kind of process. When writing fiction I can write about about my trauma from different angles without looking at it directly, without acknowledging that I’m writing about realities I experienced. I can’t look away like that with personal story.
I’m not saying it’s better or worse.
To be honest, I can write memoir & personal essay because I first wrote fiction. Fiction taught me how to write story. But fiction didn’t prepare me for the emotional excavation & confrontation with myself & my past that memoir & personal essay requires.
That’s why I stress to the writers who take my classes and/or come to me with questions about how I do this work and why: you have to prioritize self-care & reinvent it periodically. And I’m not talking self-care as a catch phrase. I’m talking about being really diligent about taking care of your health and your heart when you’re examining your life to write about what you’ve been through.
I’m working on a hard hard part of my memoir—a letter to my mother. Oof!
Yesterday, my daughter came home for less than 24 hours. I took her to a few stores to get her food, cleaning supplies & other items she needed. She left this early morning with my wife who dropped her and her million bags to her place in the city, where she’s staying while she works full time and prepares to move into her dorm in a few weeks.
I am not okay. I am sad. I am crying. I am being the mother my daughter can count on while writing about the mother I couldn’t and still can’t count on. It is an emotional ride.
Today, I am practicing self-care by going into my garden and silently chanting, while I put my hands in the soil: thank you, thank you, thank you.
If you too have mother wounds you are trying to write about, and need help, guidance, insight, community, join us on Saturday, July 30th, 11am-2pm for the Writing the Mother Wound One-Day Intensive. Partial, need-based scholarships & payment plans available.
And if you’re interested in writing about your life and don’t know how or where to begin, I created the online Intro to Writing Your Life 3 week class just for you. The class starts September 5th. Partial, need-based scholarships and payment plans also available.
I also woke up to an unwelcome message on a video of me reading an excerpt of my abortion story titled “1994” (you can watch it on my Instagram). This atrevida said: “You should have had your baby. It would have blessed your life.” Folks are wild with their assumptions, unsolicited advice and commentary. I was going to respond directly but didn't because pa’ que? I don't have to defend myself or my decisions to this stranger. Instead I deleted the comment and am now working on scheduling another one day Write Your Abortion Story class in the near future, because fuck that pendeja! What blessed my life was having autonomy on MY body. Punto! More info on that soon.
In solidarity,
Vanessa