WRITERS - PLEASE STOP!

You're breaking my heart

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” Brené Brown

STOP SHAMING YOURSELF ON SOCIAL MEDIA

‘Shame: ‘a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour.’

I browse through social media notes and posts and observe the memes and words of budding writers.

Visual self-deprecation taunting your early works or negative words spread on notes and posts in damming narrative. And it is making me sad.

Please Stop! You conjure a whole world from imagination through the creative expression of the written word. You’re awesome!

I have been on the shame train and I ran out of steam to pursue my creativity.

Shame is something I felt during my school years a lot. Shame isn’t usually about one thing, it’s a wealth of learned behaviour, words and actions over time chipping at your self-esteem.

?

I can’t recall the age I was when I felt like my dreams were crushed. I know I was in an English speaking school, so it would have been before I was 10.

I felt so nervous about the impending feedback on my poem that my mouth was dry and throat tight and my ears were ringing.

My teacher dropped my poem on my desk.? It floated down in expectation and hit the desk with a thud as she kept walking showering praise upon a pupil somewhere behind me. So, I know there is a reaction worse than feedback.

That reaction impacted my confidence and my fragile self-esteem.

As a shy child, an introvert and a highly sensitive empath, her body language, the tiny expressions, subtleties and nuances, were like an open book to me.?

Three decades later

Fast forward! Three decades later, the digital world of IT behind me, I have written 2 novels and co-authored a history of ME/CFS.

I have written many more short stories and poems bound in my Coaching and Wellbeing book and I have written and recited bitesize stories at the end of my podcasts.? I am not ashamed of any.? I have favourites, of course I do. Every writer will. What is yours?

I have recently transcribed Plain Janey onto substack so have re-read some extracts, and I smile at the words that escaped and found themselves on the pages. I do blush at my naughtiness and feel a little outrageous. But it is not a naughtiness for the sake of it, it is part of a web woven and neatly positioned in the narrative.

When I decided

I have written about, and had conversations about a looming deadline and the 1100 words that wouldn’t come. 1100 words I desperately needed to pen as part of my University Creative Writing module submission.

Although many stories began to formulate they stopped abruptly as I didn’t have the imagination to try and imagine the end. Then one did. It is titled ‘Winter Wonderland’.?

Is it a master piece? No!? But it is extremely significant. Part of my stepping stones. I am immensely proud of it because that was the work that made me realise, I am a writer, not aspiring to be one. I am one.

I typed Winter Wonderland as if I was channeling from somewhere far beyond me, I was in a state of flow, and it didn’t break until I reached the end.

My husband read it and shed tears.?The emotional intensity which I felt as I wept the words upon the pages, he felt, too.

On completion, I felt I had climbed a mountain and was standing at the summit of something amazing. I had dared to imagine the possibility of being an author.

I waited anxiously for feedback from my University tutor. He was the poet John McCullough, and when it came he barely had a constructive word.? He simply suggested a different ending on the last two lines.

His advice is still with me today, so I always take time to ensure I am not predictable in my narrative.

Noveling

In Search of the Christmas Spirit was the very first novel I submitted for publication and when I held a bound copy, it felt special. ?

When you write, you create a rhythm, your own beat.? A sense of intuition and joy is what helps you acknowledge you’re traveling the right way. ? If it is truly difficult to type or pen the words rethink and re-imagine. Are you going against your grain?

When you hit that beat you know you are being authentic. And if you are your readers will take the journey with you.

The truth is, we as human beings also evolve. So your work of yesterday may not be relevant today, but don’t hold on to shame or disrespect your creation.

Celebrate your growth.? Stop the self-deprecation, please. It’s wasted energy.

We are storytellers, see your early work as a record of personal and professional growth.

There are plenty of people who will happily share welcome or unwelcome ‘opinion’, why would you bully yourself like that?

Swim In words

If you begin a book worried about what others may think then you may never start writing.

If what you write moves you, fills you up with joy, isn’t that a good place to begin?

If you can read a sentence or paragraph back after taking a break from the narrative, and still find yourself immersed in the imaginary, feel the depth of emotions within the paragraphs, then that is enough to get on with.

I always use my husband, the person I trust the most, to proof my writing, before I get down to editing.

I sit on the other side looking in on my words as they are reflected back at me through expression and body language. I like to sense how it makes someone feel.

I have written some surprising scenes, childlike scenes and then in, Plain Janey, I have been explicit in adult themes.

For me writing is about the expression of light and shade.

But it is also about taking that one reader or one hundred or more and capturing their imagination as they navigate the world you build for them. You set the pace and intensity.

Don’t be afraid to make typos or grammatical errors as you start.? Forgetting punctuation or writing ‘there’ when you mean ‘their’ is ok.?Get it out first. It all gets cleaned up when you edit, which is the longest process in your storytelling.

MARMITE

News flash your writing will be like marmite.? It doesn’t mean you haven’t written excellent prose or poetry or a fantastic film or theatre script. It just means the subject matter doesn’t resonate with the audience. It might even be triggering.

Your chosen subject might rub up against their value system. You have to find your tribe of readers.

To this day only one of my siblings has read my books.? Friends have and they have given amazing feedback as have strangers.?

Some friends have said nothing, some haven’t finished it. “I haven’t had time,” is my feedback from the latter.

But if I keep wondering how I can make the people who haven’t commented or haven’t finished, happy, then I’m doing a disservice to the majority that have given me invaluable feedback that found joy in that world.

Some friends, who know me well, have spoken about the surprising (read shocking) content in Plain Janey. Looking at me as if they don’t know me at all.? But that’s the beauty of fiction you get to play dress up, you get to be outrageous on the pages.

Your characters all play different parts and just like the friends you have in real life or the people you have met and turned away from, a good observer will write light and shade into their narrative.

The Responsibility of non-fiction

I love writing fiction.? I can honestly state that when I write a book I know the beginning and the outcome, which makes the transition from the first chapter to the last very exciting. ? I plant the seed and then grow the narrative. I wake up and go to sleep with the fictional characters.

However, writing the history of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) was entirely different.? I enjoyed it much less because it is a HUGE responsibility.

I researched science papers and scrawled through the internet to piece the timelines together, I listened to the lived stories of patients and consolidated decades of information and it left me breathless and affected.

Where my fiction was about the deep realms of imagination,? The History of ME/CFS and the Role of the CMRC (A Patients Perspective) was beyond my imagination and more devastating.

This booklet was about the truth, it was voluntary. A request by Opal Webster-Philp, whom I met on a retreat, and who has lived with ME/CFS for 3 decades.? She and I are co-authors.

We also had to satisfy the scientists and researchers who endorsed the booklet and very importantly ensure the patient had a voice, as we consolidated evidence.

This booklet has sat on government desks and been distributed among the researchers, scientist and the patient, and people like me, who had no knowledge of ME/CFS prior to embarking on this important work.

Manuscripts were constantly back and forth.? Sections removed or added as new information surfaced. Constant checking and much curtailing so that the book didn’t grow beyond scope.

This booklet had to contain so much and be contained within a word count. It’s a bitesize booklet which tells a lengthy story.

My fictional novels took me 6 months each to write.? This booklet took a year and consumed me day and night.

I could never have imagined this horrible history that has made a section of society invisible.

WHEN TOMORROW COMES

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle

I am excited for my next books. The process begins long before pen hits paper or the fingers tap on the keyboard.

Stories sit percolating, perhaps for years perhaps only days.? We pour it out when the time is right. No effort is wasted. Celebrate your awesomeness.

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

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