published novel. In addition to being a bestseller, her screenplay was turned into a box-office hit starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson.
This alchemy of transmuting-pain-into-gold isn't the purview of an elite group of gifted, well-trained authors who were born with pen in hand. You too can access this power. When I wrote May Day, I had an English degree but had never taken a novel-writing class. I didn't even know the basics of writing a short story, let alone had I met a person who actually wrote books. Plus, I was living in rural Minnesota and, pre-Internet (at least where I lived), I had no access to writing groups. I taught myself to write a novel.
Nor is the therapeutic power of novel writing exclusive to those who have experienced deep trauma. Dr. Pennebaker found that directed, expressive writing is beneficial for everyone, meeting us where we are, whether we're coming to terms with a difficult commute, struggling against an annoying coworker, navigating a divorce, or coping with deep grief or PTSD.
You don't even have to want to publish what you write, and in fact, it's okay if you don't. Undertake this journey as if your writing is for your eyes only. You can always change your mind about publishing, but if you begin from the perspective that your writing is private, you give yourself permission to write freely and with integrity without polluting your story with the fickle demands of the publishing world, because here's the truth: it doesn't matter if you burn the novel the second you finish penning it. You can even toss it in the air, still burning, fire bullets into it, pour acid on it when it falls, and bury the ashes. You'll still reap all the physical and psychological benefits of writing it. The balm and insight lie in externalizing and controlling the story, not in showing it to others.
If and when you do decide to publish, though, you'll have something genuine and powerful to offer the world. Dickens, Alexie, O'Brien, Ephron, Allende, Winterson, and hundreds of other best-selling authors created compelling stories because they pulled them from a place of truth, vulnerability, and experience. Turning crucible moments into a novel is not only regenerative for the writer, but it's also glorious for the reader. That authenticity creates an indelible story.
So, now you know what brought me here. It wasn't Jay's suicide that was my rock bottom. It was what I let grief do to me, how I allowed it to sneak up and turn me against my child. You also know how I dug myself out—writing fiction. I didn't know the science behind narrative therapy, though it was already firmly established. I just sensed that I had to write, and it had to be fiction.
I am staking out this territory.
I'm calling it rewriting your life.
I'm inviting you to visit. Stay as long as you want. Redecorate, even.
This book is your map to this land. It puts the merciful, transformative, and very possibly profitable power of novel writing in your hands. It combines the science of narrative and expressive therapy with the practice of novel writing and a juicy vein of “I'll show you mine, so you can show you yours.” The result, I hope, will be your prescription for health and renewal from wherever you are, something you can accomplish any place, anytime, cheaply, alone or with others. Above all, this journey will be gentle and humane, and the end result will be a novel with the bones to be great.
You don't have to believe any of this.
You just have to do it.
This is the power of writing.
CHAPTER 2
KNOW THYSELF
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
—Virginia Woolf
We move what we're learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands. We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration—it is how we fold our experiences into our being.
—Brené Brown
In Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, expressive therapy pioneer Dr. James W. Pennebaker devotes several chapters to the history and power of personal honesty. According to his extensive studies, all humans have inappropriate thoughts, fears, and uncomfortable memories. The best way to move past them is to travel through them.
In other words, the truth will set you free.
Perhaps like me, you find this vastly comforting.
Building off social psychologist Dr. Dan Wegner's findings that the harder we try to bury a thought, the more power it gains (the “try not to think of a white bear” hypothesis), Pennebaker designed studies that found that when you stop suppressing and instead reveal your negative thoughts and memories, even if only on paper, you create a narrative congruence that allows your brain to release them.
Although Pennebaker's studies cannot pinpoint whether the relief comes from the act of releasing a secret or the cessation of the work of inhibiting it, the science is clear: disclosing your closet skeletons is good for your immune system, your mental health, your blood pressure, your heart rate, and a bunch of your other parts. In an elegant and interesting twist to his work, Pennebaker discovered in one particular study that the “sickest” subjects (as measured by the frequency of doctor visits) were also the people who wrote on the most superficial topics when asked to write nonstop on any subject for ten minutes, “whereas the healthy students' writing samples were broader in scope, more emotional, and more self-reflective” (61). The least healthy students wrote about the weather and their clothes, while the fittest explored relationships and the meaning of life. They were willing to make themselves vulnerable on the page.
Going deep makes us healthy, and healthy people go deep.
WHY GOOD WRITERS ARE SELF-AWARE
If deep self-awareness is crucial to mental and physical health, it's also the key to the candy store when it comes to crafting powerful fiction. According to author Joanne Harris' Writer's Manifesto, writers' most important task is to be true to themselves. Natalie Goldberg, in her awesome Writing Down the Bones, calls this state of authenticity “metaphor”:
It comes from a place that is very courageous, willing to step out of our preconceived ways of seeing things and open so large that it can see the oneness in an ant and in an elephant. . . Your mind is leaping, your writing will leap, but it won't be artificial. (37)
Jeff Davis, author of The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing, offers further insight on the necessity of writing authentically: “Part of writing the truth includes exploring the truth of our self (or selves)” (193). He doesn't mean writing memoir; he means writing honestly. According to Davis, a straightforward retelling of an event lacks the depth and complexity needed to create a powerful narrative. As writers, we must make connections by exploring the choices that led us to one outcome or another as well as the forces beyond our control, all of which leads naturally to an exploration of this mortal coil.
Deepening our self-exploration naturally results in deeper storylines in our fiction and in complex characters that speak to the universal human experience. Foregrounding these collective truths means readers will see themselves in your tale, but only if you tell it true. I've seen this proven time and again in my two decades of teaching creative writing, where I've discovered one constant: people who live unexamined lives write boring stories. If you don't
