Anna Quinn's Blog

Hey, I know things are hard right now, but it’s vital we choose hope over fear. Stand shoulder to shoulder with it. Because fear constricts. Makes us tight. Feeds more fear. Divides, disparages, denigrates. Erodes health. Erodes good decision making. Makes us stuck. Closes us down at time when our power is needed more than ever to come up with new solutions and stand up for what we believe. Hope is the open thing.The mighty thing.The fierce thing. No small thing. Hope doesn’t mean you’re naïve or delicate—it means your defiant as hell. Hope changes your brain and body like a deep breath. Hope might be the thing that leads us to the wildly inventive, imaginative, innovative, visionary things that will save us.

Maybe you’re hurling curses at the purple crocuses and eating dinner at three o’clock because who can keep track of time anymore and dinner is mostly Doritos and pancakes, and you’re afraid to drink that last carton of milk even though the use by date has come and gone, but you keep checking the date, anyway.

Maybe you thought you were ready, and you weren’t, you were born for this and you aren’t, you were safe and you’re not, and you mostly feel like a child hungry for milk and cookies and reassurance.

Maybe you’re a single mom with three children, and a mortgage and your Safeway shift begins at five a.m., and you’ve been wearing the same mask for a week and it’s impossible to believe you’ll survive this tremble of a time and what will happen to your children.

Maybe you ache of loneliness. Or maybe you’re most alive in solitude. They’re so different loneliness and solitude, one being associated with something missing, the other with something found. Maybe you’re in-between both spaces.

Maybe you’ve started a garden in your windowsill because it’s hard not to hope when you plant seeds, or at least that’s what you tell yourself, and then, your inexplicably overwhelmed with happiness when the seeds burst through the surface and open their leaves to the sun.

Maybe you’re making art and it’s more fierce and tender then you imagined, or maybe you’re not, because who can make art at a time like this.

Maybe you’re noticing things need your attention and some of those things are huge like soul work, and some are mundane like cleaning the bathroom for example, and you’re taking naps on the grass instead and imagining a stream flowing over you and you’re too exhausted for epiphanies anyway.

Maybe your partner is taking chances that scare you. Maybe they don't think you're taking enough chances, and maybe you respond, But what if the next thing you touch kills you?

Maybe there are too many reminders that you’re mortal, or someone is dying not in your arms or you’re standing alone outside, looking in the window at your mother, the frightened blinks of her eyes, or the nurse is holding the phone to your sister’s ear because she’s on a ventilator but still you know she is listening because of the way she breathes.

Maybe you’re not alone in your feelings and maybe you’re holding space for someone, or someone is holding space for you, and maybe the most important things for those of us still here are subversive gestures of tenderness and courage and daring to touch the light.

Recently, my husband, Peter and I sold our beloved bookstore, The Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Books in Port Townsend to another couple who love books as much as we do. Now that I’ve had time to catch my breath a bit, I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned over the last twelve years, so I don’t forget and also, because maybe they’ll be helpful to someone else running a business.

ONE: Be unapologetically true to your vision. Your vision is the secret sauce. Put it into words and hang it somewhere you’ll see all the time, because staying true to yourself isn’t for the faint-hearted. Yeah, you may need to revise it, but having a vision means you’re less likely to stress eat an entire chocolate cake for breakfast, and you’ll be more comfortable saying no, as much as you say yes, which brings me to Thing Two.

TWO: It’s ok to say no as much as you say yes. Running any business is an unending stream of what others think you should be doing. Unending. You should have midnight workshops! You should have a marijuana bar with nonstop open mic! You should have every single volume in all four series of Rick Riordan’s Mythical World at all times. The shoulds can take you off course faster than you can say, Wait, whatthef*ck just happened? The only way to continue enjoying yourself is to smile, consider the interesting shoulds when you have time or never, and let the rest roll over your shoulder.

THREE: It’s all about the relationships. Hands down, this was the best part of owning the bookstore. Everyone who walked in the door had a story, from the teen girl who built wells in Uganda every summer and kept a journal in her back pocket, to the crime scene cleaner who only reads fantasy, and the human statue who painted himself silver by day and wrote poetry by night, to the bingo manager who fought for low income housing, and the father who reads to his children every single night, and the eleven year old who organized an LGBTQ book club, to the farmer who donates half her crop to a food kitchen—everyone has a story if we take the time to listen. These are the things that help all of us feel less alone and give our lives, soul. These are the things I’m most grateful for.

FOUR: There will be assholes. Call me naïve, but I didn’t think assholes frequented bookstores. But alas, they do. Not often, but enough to make you silent scream in the store bathroom and write obscenities on the mirror. The worst ones show up with iPhones and snap pics of ISBN numbers and actually announce they’re ordering from Amazon because your prices are too high. They don’t give a toad’s iota about the shop local movement, the survival of neighborhood meeting places, or one conglomerate controlling all the ideas. They just want to save four f*cking dollars. Never mind they are holding a $6.00 pumpkin nutmeg latte while they stay dry in your cozy place and finger the deckle-edged hardbacks. Anyway, I could go on, but you get the picture. Roll them over your shoulder as well, and remind yourself, tomorrow, or ten years from now, they won’t matter.

FIVE: Play to your strengths. It should be noted that my familiarity running a business was zilch, though I did run K-12 public school classrooms for decades, and had a short stint as a principal, so I was good with triage and communication and removing gum from weird places, but still, words are my thing, not numbers. Peter, on the other hand, thinks numbers are as fun as writing in iambic pentameter, so he took care of paychecks and taxes and contracting with distributors and publishers. We’re still living together arm-in-arm, (which is no easy undertaking when you run a business side-by-side) and I credit the whole playing to your strengths concept as a huge reason.

SIX: Be brave and give yourself loads of permission to take risks. Sure, taking chances can be outrageously scary and awkward and you might lose everything, but some risks bring fabulous openings and experiences you hadn’t even imagined. Opening this store was a risk. Opening this store during an economic decline an even greater one. But, if we hadn’t, we’d never have met the eighty-year old woman who signed up for the Hesitant Writer’s Workshop and three years later, published her first book to great acclaim, or the young man who said as he was leaving the bookstore, Thank you, my soul feels rested now.

SEVEN: Get super ok with failure. Maybe even stroke and nuzzle it and take it out to dinner so you can thank it properly for giving you useful information and redirecting you towards your next sexy breakthrough. Don’t give Failure too many glasses of wine though, as it may slouch sloppily in the chair and start saying things like, dude, be as quirky as you want, but you’ll never be able to compete with the heavy discounts online, and also, newsflash: nobody reads anymore. (Not true, see my last sentence of this list).

EIGHT: Be prepared for surprises. there will always be surprises, big and small, because life is constantly changing, yadda, yadda, yadda. Some surprises will be laughable, like when that box of books you ordered for a book group comes in, and it’s not The Art of Racing in the Rain, it’s The Art of Racing Naked in the Rain and there’s a bunch of naked people running full frontal on the cover. Other surprises are just unbelievably beautiful like your literary hero, Dorothy Allison, walks in and talks with you about books for an hour, and you invite her to teach a workshop, and when she does, she stays at your house and sprawls around your living room in flannel pjs and you are transfixed by how real she is, how kind, and you pretty much just happy cry the rest of the week.

NINE: Pace yourself. You won’t be able to read all 6000 books in the store, or activate all your nifty ideas all at once, so calm the f*ck down. In the beginning, I believed I had to read all the books, and do all the things before they became irrelevant, which made me feel nightsweaty during the day, and put me on a speedy train to burnout. Once I slowed down and realized it was ok to say, I don’t know, not now, maybe later, maybe never, things unfolded naturally and began to feel more sustainable.

TEN: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Seek out experts in areas you want to know more about. There are smart people out there who only give advice when asked, which makes them even more cool. Take classes from them. Hire them. Revise your vision. Also, get to know other fun business owners. Meet up for drinks once in a while. This group will come in handy, when you want to vent about the assholes.

ELEVEN: Stay within your budget. This is excruciatingly hard to do if you are a book lover who owns a bookstore, BECAUSE YOU WANT ALL THE BOOKS! And there will be customers who think you should HAVE ALL THE BOOKS! and they might pressure you, but stay strong and introduce them to a book that deserves more attention than it’s getting. Spending wisely is one of the bright keys to bookstore longevity.

TWELVE: Remember you own the bookstore, it doesn’t own you. Running a business will push you physically and emotionally to your limits. It’s like an all-day cocktail party with a few friends, lots of strangers, and hardly any alcohol. Take the time to hang out with friends, practice yoga, and see a concert, even if means once in awhile you lock up the bookstore an hour early without restocking the toilet paper or responding to those last ten emails. You’ll see that you can sometimes let things go and no gerbils die.

THIRTEEN: Celebrate often! Raise your glass to the moments that go well, to your accomplishments, your risks and failures! Dance in the bookstore at night! Stay overnight! Sleep with all the stories under your head, supporting you, cushioning you, nourishing you. Because in the end, it’s all about people and their stories—the who we were stories, the who we are stories, the who we’re becoming stories, the why we care stories. Also, there are millions and millions of people who still read, and many live right by your little book shop, and they will come—because community and good books are the most beautiful combination ever.

Anna Quinn is a writer, writing instructor, and the author of The Night Child, (Blackstone 2018). The Night Child was selected by Ingram as a “Best Book for Book Clubs 2018”, and was recently listed as a #1 Amazon bestseller in Psychological Literary Fiction. Her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Psychology Today, Writers’ Digest, Washington 129 Anthology, and more. For more: annamquinn.com

The Writers’ Workshoppe and Imprint Books has been sold to the wonderful Samantha Ladwig and Thom Nienow. www.writersworkshoppe.com

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Dear Readers,

In celebration of the paperback edition of The Night Child, which includes a reader's guide, my publisher is giving away FIVE copies. Enter here:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

From Foreword Review: "The Night Child’s gentle dealings with heavy subjects highlight the fragility of the human mind and the intense journeys required to heal deep wounds."

And Seattle Book Mama: "This debut novel occupies a place in literature that has lain dormant for decades; kudos to Quinn for bringing dark business out into the light of day for a good airing. It’s tempting to say this novel is the twenty-first century’s answer to Sybil, but that doesn’t do it justice. Nora’s struggle to find the self that is held beneath layers and layers of emotional scar tissue, to heal herself so that she can be a good mother to Fiona, is one that we carry with us long after the book is over. Those that face serious mental health issues themselves will see vindication. Those that have family members or other loved ones working to unify a personality fragmented by trauma may see themselves as Paul, who’s juggling his own needs, those of his daughter, his love for Nora, and the crushing burnout that comes of living with a partner facing all-absorbing mental illness over a lengthy period of time.

Rene Denfeld, author of The Enchanted and The Child Finder : Anna Quinn's novel is a wondrous journey into the heart of survival, and our power to save our own lives. Quinn plumbs the mysteries of dissociation with lyrical courage, examining the tender line between our past and present. This is a remarkable book, full of healing and redemption.

And I was thrilled to see The Night Child was recently listed as a #1 Amazon bestseller in Psychological Literary Fiction.

Also, I LOVE to speak with bookclubs, so feel free to email me: annaquinn@writersworkshoppe.com to set up a visit or a SKYPE.

Good luck and thank you for reading!

I step up to the microphone. There’s an audience of maybe thirty people here to listen to me read from, and talk about my first novel, The Night Child. Sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer—once there were only three people and one was my husband, and the other two were booksellers.

I fumble with the microphone. I always fumble with the microphone. I hate the shape of them and how I can never get them to be where they need to be.

Hours before every event, I believe I won’t be able to speak—like seriously not be able to form words, which is a little strange because I’ve been a teacher since I was 21, and I’ve rarely had this kind of anxiety. But topics in The Night Child are personal and talking about them to strangers has tested me in all the ways.

To draw closer to calm, I tell myself things like: be brave for the child within, be brave for all those bright, imaginative, inventive children hiding under beds every night hoping no one will hurt them again.

Once the microphone is steady, I welcome everyone, thank them for coming, and somehow, I deliver enough of the words I’d hoped to say, even though I sometimes stammer and feel slightly dissociative the entire time. I tell them about the origin of the novel, and why I chose to write my story as a novel instead of a memoir. I’ve written about that here:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-b...

But then comes the scary part—the Q&A.

I told my therapist before I left for the book tour how much I dreaded the Q&A, not because of questions about writing or publishing but because of the questions about the book. The themes.

“You’re in charge,” he says. “You can skip it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

But in the end, I couldn’t skip the Q&A’s—because, I don’t know—it seemed like I’d be letting the children down, and I don’t know how to change things if we don’t talk about them.

From the audience, a young woman in the second row raises her hand.

“Anna, you said your book was informed by your own life. So…was it…was it…hard to write?”

Her black hair falls across her face, but even from here, I can see the sad in her eyes.

I tell her yes, it was hard. Sometimes, excruciating. But notwriting about it was worse. I’d fallen in love with the characters—Nora, Fiona, Margaret and Elizabeth, and I so badly wanted to give them a voice. To have them finally heard.

The young woman has a follow-up question:

“Was it…ummm…was it hard to tell people? You know, when you told people what happened to you? I mean, it just seems like, well…that sometimes it’s harder to tell a secret than to keep it?”

I am asked this question at almost every event. In one form or another. I’ve received hundreds of emails asking this question. I know people need to know things turned out ok when I told, I know they want to know that if they tell, they’ll be okay. I know because I’d asked myself this question millions of times before I finally spoke out.

I tell her that the truth is I don’t know if she’ll be okay. I don’t know if her loved ones will stay with her. I don’t know if breaking silences will save another child from being hurt, will keep another child from holding in a horrible secret. In my gut, I think it will, but I don’t know.

But I do know that breaking the silence changed me, in a way I’m still reflecting on—it’s a good way, a strong way—a way that’s allowed me to love better and more expansively. Allowed me an authenticity I’ve never before experienced. Without sounding too corny, I felt kind of new.

Also, breaking the silence allowed me to place the shame where it belonged—with him.

I say that breaking the silence was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done in my entire life. Breaking the silence meant inviting the possibility I wouldn’t be believed, or I’d lose people I cared about, or I’d be shunned, called crazy, dismissed, disappeared.

Some of my fears came true. I did lose people I cared about. Some couldn’t forgive me. Some worked hard to discredit me, some turned away—people I would have bet my heart on, wouldn’t have turned away. But they did. We weren’t able to find the healing language, and so we had to leave each other.

Thankfully, I had people who believed me—my beautiful husband and sons, some relatives, my friends, and a therapist. I think every day of those without support systems. Every. single. day. I want to work to change that.

The young woman’s eyes fill with tears as I speak.
In her eyes, I see a hero. She sends me a tremble smile and I send her one back. In my heart, I wish her all the light, all the strength.

A woman with white curly hair, and a gentleness in her eyes raises her hand.

“Anna, you’ve been out on the road for months. What’s it like to talk about abuse over and over and over again?”
I tell her that I try to speak from the lens of healing rather than the lens of abuse, and that overall, it’s been an extraordinary experience, a positive one, that talking about Nora’s story, my story, has been a good thing.

Which was true.

Except when it wasn’t.

I tell her I thought I was prepared for it all, the talking about it, people listening, people taking me seriously, but I kind of wasn’t.

Before publication and the launch and the tour, I’d spoken with other authors about what to expect when you send a book out in the world, let alone one that contains painful personal subjects. I’d felt geared up, psyched, ready. I knew to avoid reading reviews and following rankings and “best of” lists. I believed I had strong coping skills— I was prepared to create safe spaces wherever I went. Diagnosed with PTSD from childhood sexual abuse decades ago, I knew my triggers, my strategies. I knew to go directly to my hotel room after each reading and have a quiet dinner (preferably something that involved pasta and wine, and maybe brownie a la mode) with my husband, and read poetry in a place where I could lock the door and feel my boundaries again.I was all set.

And the truth is, I was fine most of the time.

But then, sometimes, once I was back in the hotel room, I wasn’t fine. I was wrecked. Sometimes I couldn’t stop crying. Sometimes I’d numb out. I’d have nightmares and wake myself up, screaming.

In another audience, an older man in a black tee shirt and jeans raises his hand.

“Hi Anna. I don’t have a question. I just wanted to thank you for your book. Watching Nora navigate adversity…tremendous adversity...well…it helped me. And some of the topics turned into family conversations about how we talk about difficult topics. Also, I think what happened in your ending is probably the hardest thing for any of us to do. Anyway.” He folds his hands in prayer over his heart.

I bring my hands together too, and send gratitude back to him.

A woman in a flowered sundress and dreadlocks wrapped up in a bun, says, “I’ve been thinking a lot about why Nora’s mother didn’t protect her. I mean, I grew up in that sort of family, you know where the patriarchy is set up from the start, where the men can’t be wrong, so you must be…” She hesitates while we wait for the rest.“ That’s all,” she says, choking on her words. "I…I…just wanted to say you can’t really underestimate the power of patriarchy.”

People nodding.

I might have said, more than once to audiences this past year, we need to smash the patriarchy and smash it fucking hard.

In another audience, a young woman asks, “Anna, I’m curious, how do you handle all the reviews?”

I say I try not to read them, because they hurt my health and creativity, but the truth is, sometimes I do read them and I begin to feel like that woman, Lacie, in the Nosedive episode of the Black Mirror series—the episode where everything Lacie does, every action she takes is scrutinized and rated from 1.0 to 5.0.

Many of The Night Child reviews are insightful and beautiful, but a few are cruel, and those reviews sometimes cut my heart and I can bleed for days because I’ve not yet learned to shrug them off. And when I say “cruel” reviews, I’m not talking about constructive commentary, I’m talking about harsh things you’d never say to someone’s face unless you truly were an asshole.

Cruel reviews make me recommit over and over again to kindness. There’s enough hurtful energy in our world and I’m going to try not to add to it. Also, the last thing I want to do is be part of someone else feeling insecure or defeated about creating art.

Sometimes, I share this quote by author Janet Frame:
"…a writer must stand on the rock of herself and her judgment or be swept away by the tide or sink in the quaking earth: there must be an inviolate place where the choices, however imperfect, are the writer's own…what was the use of my having survived as a person if I could not maintain my own judgment?”

A young woman with a guitar leaning against her chair, and tattoos up and down both arms, raises her hand.

“Hi Anna. Without spoiling anything, I just want to say how much I loved David, (the therapist) and James (the brother) and John (Nora’s friend). I loved the things they said—you know, that they didn’t just tell her to "let it go", you know?”

She sits down abruptly, stares at her Doc Martens.

For a moment, my brain flips into the intellectual part—the part that understands traumatic experiences are encoded in our brain—the part that makes it nearly impossible to "let it go".

But then I see the way the young woman is looking at me now, and my brain flips to the emotional part, which isn’t hard, because "let it go" is a trigger phrase for me.

After taking a huge breath or two, I say, “Yeah, sometimes people who say "let it go" are well intentioned? but mostly it’s a silencing thing—they need you to let it go so they can be comfortable again—it’s part of the argument invested in keeping us quiet. It was part of keeping Nora quiet. And Maeve. And Margaret. And Elizabeth. Listen, who doesn’t want to move forward with their lives? Recovering from trauma can be extremely fucking hard. And childhood sexual violation?”

Now, my eyes begin to fill. My eyes always fill when I say childhoodand sexual violationin the same sentence.

"That kind of violation runs soul deep. Not everyone makes it. There were times when I didn’t think I would. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let it go. I’m learning to manage, that’s all.”

The young woman is sitting very still. I worry I’ve said too much. The wrong things. I look at her guitar. Wonder what music she plays. If she sings. What she sings about. Someone in the audience coughs and I realize I need to wipe my eyes, and say something.

Eventually, I say, “All I know is to take all the time you need—no matter how long it takes. There are no short cuts. Everyone’s trauma experience is different. Surround yourself with people who understand you, who listen, who would never say you are broken, or damaged, or a liar, or crazy.”

She looks at me, whispers, thank you.

A woman who has been knitting the entire time, raises a silver needle and asks, “Anna, you mentioned advice your author friends gave you…can you share something with us?”

I will be forever grateful for the support and wisdom of my writing tribe. Forever. Grateful. Someday, I want to write all their words in one place. During all these events though, there's one piece of advice I’ve repeated to myself often. It’s from my dear friend, Rikki Ducornet. Right before I left on the tour she took my hands, looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Anna, trust that your story will take care of you, like you have taken such deep care of it.”

And the truth is, she was right. Even when I broke apart, forgot shame wasn’t mine, wondered if I could go on, I could feel my story—built upon thousands and thousands of other survivor stories—had wings strong enough to carry the all of me back into safety, and with any luck, carry another child too.

Had a great time talking with the wonderful host of Author2Author, Bill Kenower, yesterday. Ha, I think we could both talk about writing all day long!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/author-m...

Recently, I wrote an article for Writer's Digest and thought I might share it here. Hope you like it...The Night Child

In our “Breaking In” column in Writer’s Digest magazine, we talk with debut authors—such as Anna Quinn, author of The Night Child—about how they did it, what they learned and why you can do it, too. Discover more in the February 2018 issue of Writer’s Digest.

by Anna Quinn

My novel The Night Child was born from my memoir—a narrative of my personal history with dissociation, sexual abuse and survival. For my memoir—for more than a decade—with the support of my psychotherapist and trusted writing mentors, I wrote to make sense of what happened, to understand the impact, and if I was lucky, to finally live a life free of deep hyper-vigilance and detachment—to believe I had a life worth saving.

Writing my memoir was revealing and agonizing and achingly healing, but in the end, something—an important piece of information—was missing, an emotional truth I could vaguely sense, but not articulate. A truth that I needed if I was to thrive, a truth I needed if I was to contribute to the larger conversations of mental illness and sexual abuse—conversations that meant everything to me. Well aware of the research conveying how trauma can physiologically distort the functioning of the brain, how our brains can hide and erase memory to protect us from unbearable pain, I worried I had forever blocked elements I needed to fully access those necessary truths.

Frustrated, I let go of the memoir, and began exploring the themes of dissociation, memory, sexual abuse and resilience using different forms: poetry, essay and fiction. I wrote hundreds of poems, dozens of essays—I became obsessed with finding the missing conceptual knowledge. Perhaps this drive was related to Freud’s suggestion that traumatized people will attempt to revisit injury in all its complexity and form, in order to master its terror and regain emotional control, or maybe at some level I still didn’t feel completely safe telling my entire story. No matter what though, I kept writing: my way of working into and toward truth.

Writing poetry and essays inched me into new and startling depths, and there were moments when I thought, Yes! This is different! This is something! But it was only when I began to describe my earliest experiences of dissociation and betrayal through fiction—through imaginary characters—that an unexpected story began to insist itself, began to push out beyond my singular experience, beyond the story I’d been telling—images, sights and sounds began to stream out faster than my fingers could write. First, the image of a young mother sitting on a cold kitchen floor, late at night, swallowing spoonful after spoonful of artificially sweetened ice cream. And then a young girl dressed in an orange sweatshirt, jeans and red Keds with purple laces appeared, ready for Thanksgiving Dinner. Next, a teen girl, in a classroom, drawing skulls on the cover of her notebook and darkening the eyes sockets, her fingers thins as pencils, her nails bitten to the quick, the stubs of them painted pitch black. Character after character walked onto the stage, announcing themselves and presenting scenarios, conflicts, attitudes, and beliefs without scripts—some of which were familiar to me, and others, unsettling and mystifying.

And I sat there witnessing it all; invisible, yet feeling their hearts beating in my chest and viewing everything through their eyes. I tried not to think about who they were or why they were appearing—I only wrote what I saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched. It was bizarre and fantastic: I’d passed through some kind of portal—a place of a calming clarity—a place of beholding a story beyond a story.

That’s when I realized my memoir wanted to be a novel—or some genre blurring the edges of memoir and novel. Virginia Woolf, who often drew from her own memories, once wrote: “I have an idea that I will invent a new name for my books to supplant ‘novel’. A new—by Virginia Woolf. But what?” (Diary 3: 34) Yes, what should we call The Night Child, Virginia? It’s not an autobiographical novel—i.e. the changing of names and locations, and dramatization of real events that happened to the author. Only two of my characters, Nora and Margaret, are modeled after real people. The central plotline and settings partially mirror my life, but much of the narrative was unfamiliar to me. The Night Child had its own life, its own magic and its own intelligence. It urged me to write forward as a witness and without exerting control over the arc’s trajectory. I watched as each character, including Nora and Margaret, answered my memoir questions, but this time from a separate and shifted consciousness. What do you want? What do you feel? What do you carry? What do you most want me to know? What are you most afraid of? Why? What do you have to gain by changing? What do you have to lose? Their stories consumed me—the characters insisting themselves into being, as if to say, I want out, I want to breathe, I want to live.

The lens of fiction freed me.

Fictionalizing my work wasn’t new for me. As a child and a teen, I didn’t write stories about my life, I wrote myself into the stories I wanted to live in. In my childhood stories, I wore black cowboy boots, fought monsters with a shiny silver sword and rode a flying white horse named Brigid (named after Saint Brigid of Ireland who stole her father’s possessions and gave them to the poor, turned a fox into a pet, and prayed to be ugly so no one would marry her). In my teenage stories, I wore Doc Martens, smoked Marlboros and wore a black leather jacket. I was fearless and no one dared mess with me. This is how writing saved me. This is how I survived.

The transmutation of lived experience into fiction for further introspective work isn’t uncommon: Sylvia Plath did it in The Bell Jar, Alice Munro in The View from Castle Rock, Carrie Fischer in Postcards from the Edge, Dorothy Allison in Bastard out of Carolina, Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried and Virginia Woolf in To The Lighthouse—I could go on. These authors used their personal experiences as seeds for stories, but most of the characters and events were intentionally changed for purposes of a deeper exploration—they separated out their own narrative and used it as part of a larger, more universal story.

Changing point of view also mattered. Switching from first person to third person limited allowed me to explore fears from a new frame of reference: fears that often paralyzed me, the relentless possibility of a mother’s death, an abusive father lurking in the shadows, a husband’s betrayal, thoughts of madness and suicide, and the dominance of patriarchal culture. Fiction allowed me to explore trajectories different than my own, particularly the impact of being believed and listened to with intent and love.

Best of all, turning to fiction to unlock story allowed me to finally draw closer to my emotional core. I’m not all the way there, probably not even close—that’s lifelong work—but fiction helped me uncover at least two truths, which I cannot write about here without spoiling the book. The bottom line is that opening to the form where words flowed most naturally through my bloodstream led me to the story I most wanted to tell. As Doris Lessing said, in her novel, Under My Skin, “There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”