Strategies for Keeping Yourself (and Your Writing) Honest
By: Amanda Recupido
Tags: Self-awareness, Abuse, Journaling, Healing, Writing

Strategies for Keeping Yourself (and Your Writing) Honest

Photo by Lisa from Pexels

When I first started writing my novel in 2016, I thought I knew what it was about: an abusive romantic relationship. I quickly learned that to tell that story, I had to talk about what led me to enter that relationship in the first place. In writing that, I uncovered layers upon layers of buried memories, extracted from therapy and while pouring over old journals. Five years after I started writing, after what I would consider three complete drafts, I find myself relooking at my own story all over again.

It’s our job as writers to help others awake to their own truth.

Writers are by nature introspective people. We’re observant — about other people’s behaviors and our own. We want to understand why we feel the way we do, and use the power of our words to help explain it to others, as if to say, “this happened to me, and I know I’m not alone — is this what it was like for you?” I consider myself pretty self aware. If I had buried my own experiences under memory suppression, substance use, and other forms of distraction, what does that mean for others who don’t dwell and ruminate like I have?

It’s our job as writers to help others awake to their own truth. Here are a few ways I keep myself awake to mine:

Journal

Most writers keep some type of freewriting exercise as part of their daily routine, whether through morning pages, journaling, or something else entirely. I’ve kept the habit of rereading my journals upon completion, but I’m learning it’s also necessary to revisit those older journals after time has passed. Rereading our own words after a few years helps give us the perspective we need to look at our thoughts objectively and apply them to our writing accordingly.

Therapy

If all we do is blindly move forward, we don’t fully absorb the lessons of our experiences or have the proper context of our own minds. And if we don’t understand ourselves and our own motivations, how are we as writers expected to create true characters with realistic emotional journeys?

Clear headedness

I highly recommend incorporating any enjoyable activity that helps you slow down and remove distraction so your thoughts can rush forward to your consciousness, be it yoga, meditation, long walks, running, swimming, knitting — anything that lets your mind wander into creativity. Ideas and thoughts will bubble up, without fail. And if they don’t? That means you need to slow down even more.

Sharing (when ready)

Art is nothing if it doesn’t resonate, and the only way to understand if you’re connecting creatively is to talk it out with another human (or for the very brave, share your work in progress). The more I discuss my own story and the themes of my book, the more I know I’m onto something, and the more I employ the other tactics mentioned above so that I can continue to craft my story the way it needs to be told.

Writing, like healing, is not a linear process.

Writing, like healing, is not a linear process. Just as I’ve gone back to the drawing board several times with my current project, so too have I considered myself all healed from my past experiences, only to unlock a door to an entire other bank of memories that needed to be processed. In many ways, my book isn’t yet complete because my healing journey isn’t finished. But giving yourself the tools to awaken to your own experience helps put your story into a greater context that will ultimately help more people.

And that’s why we write.