Writing fiction as a way to move forwards.
Last week I shared a bit about the writing course that led to me writing my short story, Aftershock.
Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it.
I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given.
In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off.
I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood.
I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London.
It happened right in the middle of my course of CBT, the day the occupational therapist had recommended I'd be able to return to my normal working hours, and the day after a wonderful weekend away which left me feeling in a really good place.
For some reason, it's an incident I haven't written about on here, which has frustrated me as writing about things on here is one of the methods I use to work through things and to get them out of my head and sort of tick off having moved through them.
I tried to write about it multiple times, but instead of letting it out my brain decided flashbacks and prolonged panic in certain situations was a better option.
At some point during the writing course, the idea came to me of trying to use fiction as a way to work through what had happened, if my usual method of writing on here wouldn't work. With fiction, I could give the story a different ending.
The next day, flicking through the notes on my phone, I found some words I wrote at that time. I was sitting in an Uber and wrote a few paragraphs in the notes app on my phone. They were about emptiness and putting on a mask and trying to cope.
Nothing felt more appropriate than using my words from those days following the incident to open my story.
Once those words were on the page, the story flowed out of me. I started with the feelings on the days after what had happened. I then flashed back to a few days earlier, to the day a man ran towards me on busy Oxford Street. To the strangers making a circle around me, all trying to push this man away as he lunged at me again and again. To everything that followed.
In my story, I then had the power to move forwards. I jumped ahead in time and I wrote the story a new ending. I was able to use the frame of fiction to think about why this man had behaved that way. A way to make peace with the fact he was never caught.
I suppose you could say that it was a sort of therapy. Since the day I submitted the story, the memories of that day have become so much less frequent.
In combination with that, I had the satisfaction of having completed a short story, after years of having no confidence in writing fiction.
It was an emotional writing process, but I must have let some things out I'd been holding onto tightly. And I don't think I'll be staying away from writing fiction for too long...
Sophie x
Today I thought I'd share a bit about what it was about, and the process of writing it.
I had planned to write it slowly, leaving myself lots of editing time and really making use of the month or so we were given.
In fact, I wrote most of it in one sitting, on a single afternoon when I most definitely should have been doing other things. The words just kept coming and I didn't want to cut them off.
I based my story on something that had actually happened to me, as one of the things recommended on the course was that it could be easier to get inside a character or situation if it was something you knew and understood.
I share a lot on this blog and I'm incredibly open about my journey with anxiety and depression, but one of the big things I haven't spoken about was something that happened to me in October 2016, when I was living and working in London.
It happened right in the middle of my course of CBT, the day the occupational therapist had recommended I'd be able to return to my normal working hours, and the day after a wonderful weekend away which left me feeling in a really good place.
For some reason, it's an incident I haven't written about on here, which has frustrated me as writing about things on here is one of the methods I use to work through things and to get them out of my head and sort of tick off having moved through them.
I tried to write about it multiple times, but instead of letting it out my brain decided flashbacks and prolonged panic in certain situations was a better option.
At some point during the writing course, the idea came to me of trying to use fiction as a way to work through what had happened, if my usual method of writing on here wouldn't work. With fiction, I could give the story a different ending.
The next day, flicking through the notes on my phone, I found some words I wrote at that time. I was sitting in an Uber and wrote a few paragraphs in the notes app on my phone. They were about emptiness and putting on a mask and trying to cope.
Nothing felt more appropriate than using my words from those days following the incident to open my story.
Once those words were on the page, the story flowed out of me. I started with the feelings on the days after what had happened. I then flashed back to a few days earlier, to the day a man ran towards me on busy Oxford Street. To the strangers making a circle around me, all trying to push this man away as he lunged at me again and again. To everything that followed.
In my story, I then had the power to move forwards. I jumped ahead in time and I wrote the story a new ending. I was able to use the frame of fiction to think about why this man had behaved that way. A way to make peace with the fact he was never caught.
I suppose you could say that it was a sort of therapy. Since the day I submitted the story, the memories of that day have become so much less frequent.
In combination with that, I had the satisfaction of having completed a short story, after years of having no confidence in writing fiction.
It was an emotional writing process, but I must have let some things out I'd been holding onto tightly. And I don't think I'll be staying away from writing fiction for too long...
Sophie x
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