Writing From Within to Free Your Truths
The key to crafting meaningful stories
Hi friends, I’ve had a revelation this week about my latest fiction project. Something that I have known for a while that I need to look at but have been pushing from my mind. But this week my mind decided that it would let me push it away no more.
I was reading back through the craft posts I have shared so far in the Year of Mindful Writing course and this is something I had written in one of them.
What it means to be human. This is what all our stories are about. So to start mindfully writing stories that really matter to you, you need to free your truths about what it means to be human. Not just the surface thoughts. The ones deep down inside of you that have been formed at different times, by different experiences, and may well never have been looked at before.
I have been doing a lot of development work on my new novel (maybe a novella, we’ll see how things pan out!) but I am not getting very far with the actual writing. Nowhere would be more truthful. I have written just 800 or so words and they were written months ago. I have been avoiding thinking about why this is and distracting myself by writing flash fictions instead. A pattern I have been in with my fiction writing for many years. But one that I do now recognise and accept.
In reading back the craft post I wrote for the course, I realised that my lack of progress is linked to what I have said in this quote. I am not digging deep enough. I’m not freeing my truths. And I’m not doing this because I’m scared to.
In the same craft discussion post, I include these quotes from two of my favourite writing craft books.
I have done a lot of looking in those rooms and abysses at my anger and damage and grief over the years, with the help of therapy and spiritual teachings, but I feel like this story needs me to look again. The protagonists in my new book, Tara and Daisy, first appeared in two unrelated flash fictions written a year or so apart — Tara in Things Left Behind in an Oxfordshire Field in 1989 the Day After an Illegal Rave; and Daisy in Degeneration. A year or so after the rave story was published, they started coming to me and telling me they know each other. For a while, I just nodded but then Tara wouldn’t leave me alone and I had to start writing things down that she was telling me. So the new novel/novella was born.
I know how important theme and subtext is to a story, which is where this next quote comes in.
And this is the revelation I had this week — I haven’t been thinking about the themes at all but instead purely focusing on the characters and storyline. I know a lot about Tara and Daisy. I know, pretty much, what happens in the story in both timelines. I know how it starts, I know how it ends, I know a lot of what I think will happen in between. But I haven’t been writing it. I haven’t been writing it as I don’t know what the theme is. So I don’t know my personal meaning that I can attach to it.
And I have recognised that the reason I haven’t been thinking about the theme is because doing so involves going into those rooms. The story is set in my home town, which I haven’t lived in for twenty-two years, in 2015 and in 1990. Tara and Daisy are a little bit older than me and will be (re)living some of my young adult experiences of a life of hedonism in that town. They are not me and the story is not my life, but I believe that there is a reason they and this story have come to me now. That the theme that lies at the heart of it is something I need to explore from that time, and from that part of me that led a hedonistic life for many years.
Like Dara Marks says, I need to decide what I believe to be true about the theme this story is exploring. So to find it, I must do what Anne Lamott says and go back to that time and look around, breathe and take it all in. Then, finally, I can uncover that theme and get on with the writing. Which despite my procrastination, I really do want to do.
One of the writers I’m working with on the mindful writing course, Loretta, said this: “Amanda motivates you to develop a kind of courage that takes you deep inside yourself — to the place where your characters and their stories live and breathe.”
So if I can do that for others, then I must be able to do it for myself.
I’ll let you know how I get on.
What about you? Is there a story you’re working on that you’re not digging deep enough into? Are there truths inside of you that need to be freed to allow you to do so? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
With love,
This couldn't have come at a better time - I'm slowly realising how much I need to face my truth and gain the courage to tell it. Ive spent the morning taking a poem from being about birds to its true self. It was painful. Courage is needed - knowing others feel the same is invaluable.
This rings very true, Amanda, although I don't write fiction my writing does come from a truth I am experiencing in the moment. I also wanted to say, I finished reading Pressure Drop and really enjoyed it. I wanted it to go on, to become a novel, but it is also so perfectly formed as it is. Thank you.