I remember how many times she let me walk to the store alone when I was five, or how she encouraged me to miss two weeks of fifth grade because we didn't like the politics of the long-term sub. But I get her point. I survived, and my kids would, too.
Still, when my plane left the ground or my wheels crossed the state line, my catastrophic thinking kicked in. What if my babies were kidnapped? Would I be able to find them? Could I go on living if I didn't? Or if they ended up in the hospital, how long would it take me to get back to them? What do you even think about when you're waiting to get a flight back to your children in a hospital? Should I call and make sure they're okay? Or should I wait until I've been gone five minutes?
Agh.
And don't even get me started on public speaking. You know how people say, “It was an honor just to be nominated?” I mean it. I like staying in the audience. I worry every time I speak in front of a crowd of people I respect that I'll start bleating like a sheep right before my bowels relax.
So there you have it. The true confessions of a catastrophic thinker. I imagine there is a medication for it, but I am certain that the same part of my brain that takes these wicked spirals is the part that allows me to love reading and spinning stories. All it takes is a spark, and I can run with it. (The superstitious part of me is also sure that thinking about all this stuff is protection against it happening. Sorry, author of the The Secret.)
This is My Own Special Blend of crazy™. I know exactly where it lives in my brain, and that's where I go to harvest the humor when I need it in my writing. That connection with my weirdness keeps my work authentic. You have your own unique foibles, and you should be honest about them. You should also mine the mother-loving daylights out of them because that intersection of vulnerability and creativity is where your voice and your fire live.
Don't just assume you know yourself, by the way. We all don our masks, and we do it so often that often we wear them home. In fact, despite my lifetime of worrying and seeking personal authenticity, it was my incredibly uncomfortable Kickstarter campaign in 2014—a request for help in funding the self-publishing of my magical realism novel—that made me realize how much I censor myself in my daily life. I'm not talking about being unkind or insensitive to others. I don't condone either. I'm talking about overthinking everything I say or write for fear of accidentally offending someone, of shaving off my edges so no one is ruffled, of being bland and funny and helpful. None of that serves me, or the people I love, or most importantly to this moment, my writing.
To write well, you must know and be yourself, at least on the page.
TRUTH BEFORE TALE
I've created a simple, three-part journaling exercise to help you increase your self-awareness as well as nudge you toward thinking about how to apply it in your writing. It's called Truth Before Tale. You can find it in its entirety at the end of the chapter, but here's an overview:
Step One Crack open that notebook you straightaway got your hands on after reading this book's introduction. Starting on the first page, freewrite on five topics for ten minutes per topic. If you're unfamiliar, freewriting means writing without judgment, fear, or correction. It's about quantity rather than quality. Turning off your inner critic is crucial to the writing process, and giving yourself permission to freewrite is the quickest way to achieve that. The five topics you will freewrite on: what you are most scared of, what you are proudest of, what your greatest strengths are, your deepest shame, and most importantly, what you're most seeking in life.
Step Two Carry the notebook around for three days and write down your mental chatter three times each of those three days. I recommend setting a timer to remind yourself to do this. This step provides insight into what your mind is up to when you're not paying attention.
Step Three Cull the information you uncovered in Step One and Step Two, neat and sweet, gathering what resonates and leaving the rest. Begin to consider how you can use this material in your novel. It's okay if you don't have an idea for your novel yet. Just go with the process.
In the hopes that it is helpful to you, I'm going to show you my Step Three below. No way would I ever show you my Step One and Step Two, though. They are messy and incoherent and terrifying. I expect yours will be, as well, and that it might be hard to let the truth spill out on paper. Remember that you don't need to show it to anyone. If that assurance isn't enough, I recommend you plan on ripping out the pages and burning them when you're done writing them. I'm serious. You need to access the past and the truth, but you shouldn't live there. Getting it out will provide relief, and you'll have enough to create Step Three from memory, which is the only step you need for writing your novel.
My Step Three below is the result of freewriting on each of the five topics in Step One (scared of, proud of, strengths, shame, life goals) and randomly checking in with my brain à la Step Two. Finally, when organizing the information from those two steps, I started to think about how I could use it in my writing. Here goes. Please, think about your own Step Three while you read mine.
What I'm Most Scared Of
Turns out my biggest fear is being myself, my whole, lovely-ugly Jessie, and having people laugh and point. Here are the parts of me that I shave off so as to be bland and easily inserted into a variety of social situations, as well as to not turn off potential readers:
I'm a little bit raunchy. I like to swear. Fuck. See? I liked typing that. Fuckity fuck.
I'm regularly inappropriate. For example, the other day, my son asked if he could buy Axe body spray. I said, “No, because it'll shrink your testicles.” He was twelve at the time. He was horrified, but he didn't question me. I call that good parenting (that stuff smells like the thigh juice of musk oxen crammed on a sun-cooked bus packed with Mediterranean playboys), but it might make others squeamish. So I didn't post it on Facebook, but I've been dying to share it with someone. That someone is you.
I'm a liberal. And a feminist. I shy away from sharing anything political because I'm a Minnesotan, I don't want to silence people or give the impression I know everything, and I don't want people to be mean to me or reject me, but I'm about as liberal as they come. I support civil rights including gay marriage, I like clean air and healthy food, I believe in investing in people rather than corporations, and I think every mentally healthy person wants to be a productive member of society and take care of themselves and their family and so should get at least as many opportunities as I have to live where they want to live, take out a loan, be considered for a job on their mer its rather than gender or race or sexuality, and have access to quality education. All that good stuff. I also enjoy informed disagreement (my friends and family do not all share my opinions) and am fine with the “I don't knows.” Willful ignorance, though? Makes me rage.
My sense of humor is not always kosher. I sometimes think weird things are funny. Weird, horrible things like that Internet photo of two action figure GI Joes perched on the corpse of a roadkill squirrel as if they've just hunted it on safari.
Some days, I'm crabby, uninspired, and scared. Scared that people will hate my writing, worried that people will see right through me and turn away, afraid that whatever spark it is that keeps me wanting to tell stories and write books will disappear and I'll feel lost. This means that I'm not always funny or interesting. My funny is a dial-up superpower rather than a Wi-Fi one.
I am not religious, but I am spiritual. I'm pretty far from having this one figured out, but what it means in practice is that I will treat other people as I would like to be treated,
