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First Comes Reading
My urge to put words onto the page began with reading. Owen Meany, an elephant whose name is Mud, an Irish boy called Henry, couples sat about a table drinking and talking foolish about love—these encounters with fiction can be as real and meaningful as my actual so-called life. In imagining theirs, I grow the capacity to live mine.
This has always felt important to me, but it feels even more essential in these conflicted and often narrow-minded times. Empathy is a muscle. Reading gives it exercise.
Being Vulnerable
So it is also with writing, a different access point to the same experience. Isn’t the hardest thing for us as human beings allowing ourselves to be vulnerable? Nobody likes admitting their weakness and yet that is the only way we can make a more compassionate world. Stories if you haven’t noticed, insist upon it.
Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, I look for what I’d rather not say. Hiding in plain sight, these opportunities announce themselves in scenes that end without conflict or characters who stop talking and walk away with unexpressed emotions. Yeah, that’s avoidant for sure. Another telltale sign is simply in the writing itself. If all that would be experience turns suddenly into cold, lifeless, detached description, avoidance is generally involved.
Dislodging that hidden emotion or thought is neither simple nor easy, at least not for me. What is locked inside does not reveal itself with the first try or the second, or sometimes for many attempts after. Imagining and reimagining, writing and rewriting, and sometimes the almighty sprint, running like a fool to nowhere in particular, those spontaneous writing sessions in which I am not allowed to stop no matter what drivel spills from my brain. Many of the better things I’ve written have taken years and have come into being after I’ve tried so many times that I’m about ready to give up.
Expecting Diversity
Warm blooded people can turn into monsters if we try to make the complexity of human existence uniform. Every one of us is unique and the views I hold most closely can be meaningfully contradicted daily if only I open myself to other people’s cultures and world views. Keen readers are well aware of this. Characters who challenge us, even unpleasantly, hold our imagination and perhaps even our empathy. Oh my, consider that if you dare. Now, go read Silence of the Lambs. Shiver.
I remain uneasy trying to create characters from cultures or worldviews different from mine. It’s an ongoing debate I have with myself. If I do not include characters different from myself, I am perpetuating my own prejudice and privilege. If I do include such characters, I may get it horrifically destructively wrong. The best solution is to find writers and/or readers willing to give feedback on authenticity. I also think it’s important to accept the discomfort, to take it as a sign that I am doing the work required. I will be most suspicious of my accuracy when I start believing I understand the lived experiences of people who are different from me.
Welcoming Disagreement
So, what is a writer to do? Accept disagreement, seriously. Set it as your actual goal and be pleased if readers do not agree with you.
Radical, I know. This is the flip side of the vulnerability I mentioned earlier. It’s not enough to seek to convey uncomfortable feelings and thoughts as part of the writing process. If a story has deep emotional impact, if it inspires readers to feel, sooner or later one of those readers is going to feel things that may not be complimentary to the writer.
Engaging in Dialogue
The super power of writing is its ability to start conversations. For the conversations to be lively, there needs to be disagreement. Empathy is a muscle, like I said. It needs to be worked and stretched. What better exercise than to take your private experiences of reading and compare them to the private experiences of others who see things differently from you. This is the joy of book clubs and online reader platforms like Goodreads.
Which leads me to a final thought that is equally radical. Readers are always right. You heard me. As a writer, you may adamantly disagree with what a reader thinks or feels about your work. So be it and bring it on. Because if the point of stories is to build empathy, we need to genuinely get behind the idea of freedom of speech and thought, and the democracy of ideas.
What do you think? Post a comment. I’d be grateful to hear from you. Also, if you appreciated this blog, subscribe. It’s free.
Debbie Bateman 