We’re All Stories
One of my favorite lessons in my Writing Fiction to Heal Workshop is where I introduce the countless amounts of creators who have used this method to create art or write books as a method of healing. They may not have come right out and said “I wrote this book to heal,” but some of them are unflinchingly honest in their portrayal of reality-turned-fiction novels. Some of them have talked about writing their “realities” in the form of a fictional tale in order to move past emotional blocks and turmoil.
What I tell my students and potential clients is this: this method of writing fiction to heal? It’s not new. It’s very, very old. Dating as far back as writing on stone tablets. Shakespeare, Dickens, Woolf, Plath, and a whole legacy of classic writers have used this method.
In this article, I’d like to introduce you to a few of these creators and their creations so you can get a better understanding of how they used the method to heal.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Little Dog, the protagonist in Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a clear stand-in for the author himself and the subject of the novel, letters to his mother (who cannot read) are also taken from his reality. In an interview for The Paris Review¹, he says,
“I wanted the book to be founded in truth but realized by the imagination. I wanted to begin as a historian and end as an artist. And I needed the novel to be a praxis toward that reckoning.”
As the interview goes on, we see that ultimately what Vuong had set out to do with his novel is explore some of the hardest truths he’d had to face in his lifetime, therefore bringing upon those hardships into his characters. I’m certain not all of the scenes worked out as they did in the novel, but there is a deep ribbon of truth that flows beneath all of his sentences and throughlines. His most evocative scenes (in my opinion), are the ones where the emotion touches on a nerve that we can actually imagine... the deep-cutting truth of a secret revealed. A return secret that was unexpected and cut even more deeply. When asked about his views on writing, he says,
“Our lives are full of restrictions—jobs, bills, time, gravity, all of this impinging on us—but to write is to gift yourself the freedom of choice and possibility. That feels truly precious to me.”
I believe he is right. The ultimate gift of writing is the freedom to choose what goes in, what stays in, and what remains when you strip away everything else.
Belfast by Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast is already exploding as a “hit” with movie critics and watchers alike. It’s an admittedly semiautobiographical film about the lived experiences Branagh and his family experienced during the Trouble Times in Northern Ireland in 1969. Forced out of Belfast because of the violence, Branagh brings viewers into the heart of the trauma he experienced. In an interview with The New York Times², he said his reason for making the film was,
“Perhaps to understand that situation. That rupture was the most significant event in my personal life. There was a sense that before that mob came up the street I knew who I was and that I was at peace. From that point onward, a whole series of identities and masks was constructed. What I wanted to do was peel some of those away. To do some self-remembering without indulgence, simply trying to open what had been covered up. Because there’s so much of who I am that was formed in that period up to 8 years old and before that riot occurred. But from that moment there was a guardedness, there was an inability to roll with things in the way that one had done before.”
Throughout the interview, there’s a distinct difference in the way Branagh speaks about Belfast versus some of the other hit movies he’s had a role in. As a writer of autofiction, I understand this completely. Creating something for the public versus creating something for yourself first and foremost means that by the very nature of the “thing,” it is personal. It is a version of our story. And it’s hard to separate the emotional attachment we have to that “thing.” I think the fact that Branagh talks so openly about his reasons for wanting to make this movie speaks directly to the heart of all of us. We’re all trying to understand the situations of our past. We’re all trying to find meaning from the tragedies we encounter in life. But those brave enough to face the blank page, canvas, or whatever medium we’re working in with the intention of working through our shit often end up with something satisfyingly breathtaking. Even if no one else sees it that way.
The Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson
Mitchell S. Jackson, a black man raised by a single mother in a hard-knock neighborhood was incarcerated as a teen for drug offenses. It’s not surprising then to find a similar character living a similar life in his novel, The Residue Years. The book's events and emotions ooze with reality because, well, the author has actually lived it. A book about systemic oppression and how it forces oppressed youth to do things just to survive — Jackson takes us into the world he lived in but also a world that many young black people are living in today. The dual effectiveness of his novel is not only that we see how he, the author, manages to break free from oppressive systems, but it becomes a voice for others who feel weighed down by their oppression.
An avid social justice reform advocate, Mitchell S. Jackson speaks to youth facilities and prisons about his experiences of turning his life around.
The Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk
A memoirist known for her less-than-stellar reviewed books, Rachel Cusk decided to switch genres to autofiction. The similarities between the two genres are plentiful, but there is a stark distinction... and it makes all the difference in the world. And that distinction is about proximity in the story. While memoirs (most anyway) have clear and defined “standards” of truth... fiction and autofiction do not. We can understand by labeling a book “autofiction” that some parts of the book have been inspired by, taken from, or written from personal experience, but there is no limit to how far the truth can be stretched. This is incredibly liberating for the writer. That small yet enormous stretch of standards can be the difference between really digging into the depths of the story you want to tell versus staying on the surface to remain somewhat objective in the telling of our own lives. Cusk does not shy away from talking about the fact that she, directly and indirectly, steals from her own life and experiences to craft The Outline Trilogy and she does not shy away from exploring darker threads that fascinate both her, the author and her characters.
In an article for The New Republic³, Lauren Oyler says of Cusk’s Outline Trilogy,
“With the Outline books, she hit upon a form that illuminated the complicated “relationship between the story and the truth,” and between fiction and autobiography.”
In speaking about Cusks new book of essays, Oyler also says,
“The essays here can be read as an opportunity to view Cusk’s old problem of story from another angle; in them, she is constantly adjusting, reframing, and questioning. They demonstrate a fixation on the truth—identifying it, drawing meaning from it, separating it from the “stories” or “narratives” that tangle themselves in it.”
Midnight Mass by Mike Flanagan
Mike Flanagan is no stranger to telling hauntingly beautiful and tragic stories. He’s also no stranger to infusing them with a few of his own experiences. But in the Netflix series, Midnight Mass, there is a deeper thread of truth that weaves it all together. In an interview with The New York Times⁴, Flanagan says,
“Is by far his most personal work — it is inspired by some of his most persistent fixations, as well as his experiences with religion and addiction.”
Throughout the interview, Flanagan explains how his own “reckoning” with God, religion, death, and faith impacted the show’s narrative structure. Additionally, his own struggles with addiction played a role in developing the main character, Riley.
At the end of the interview, Flanagan reflects on why it took him until now to create from such an authentic and vulnerable place,
“I was writing about alcoholism but wasn’t yet sober; I was writing about atheism, but I hadn’t gotten over my anger,” he continued. “I’ve had some beautiful revelations.”
That is the power of writing fiction to heal.
What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons
Zinzi Clemmons’ beautiful book, What We Lose is such a beautiful exploration of blending truth and reality. Clemmons wrote the autobiographical novel while caring for her mother full-time due to her cancer. She wrote notes in short bursts that eventually became the stitched together narrative of What We Lose. In an article with Apogee’s Executive Editor, Alexandra Watson⁵, Clemmons comments on one reason she had to write the novel the way she did,
“When you love that person, you want to take care of them and know where they are forever, and not being able to know if they’re okay is hard. If you’re not religious, you don’t believe. Knowing that you don’t know what happens to them is the worst part. And having to reconcile your belief or lack of belief with your loss of a loved one was irreconcilable to me. So all I could think to do about it was write.”
Further along in the interview, Watson asks Clemmons about the socio-economic privilege that shows through in What We Lose and her response is so very akin to how autofiction works,
“Because this book sprang from that experience, those observations came from what I saw around me. The way that I tend to deconstruct and categorize different experiences, mostly in a structural way, it was natural that those observations would lean in that direction.”
I particularly enjoyed Clemmons comments on how her novel evolved from notes and personal experience into the masterpiece it became,
“I started with these notes I took when my mom was sick. I combined it with the experiences that happened in the original story that this was based off of. I blended those characters together. To go from that to taking Thandi’s life into the future was a big step for me. I had her ending up single, married, and then at first she was married with Peter happily ever after. And I was like, No, that’s crap. I extended it, they get divorced, I was thinking about motherhood myself because my mom had just died, and I was getting close to 30, so it was something that kept coming up.”
Additional Examples
Spin by KJ Farnham (Read my interview with her about writing Spin to heal)
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russel (Read my thoughts on the book and the controversy surrounding it)
Brooke Smiley (Watch her interview on writing fiction to heal deep wounds)
I hope I was able to bring some light to some of these creators and their creations and it has illuminated the various ways in which writing fiction can be healing and a powerful form of storytelling. There are countless other examples to be found if you’re willing to keep an open mind with the word “fiction.” It’s my belief that most often, the most believable characters written often stem from a place of truth or reality. Start reading with an eye for authenticity, and I think you’ll be able to see it, too.
Interested in learning more about writing fiction to heal? Consider checking out the relaunch of my Writing Fiction to Heal Workshop. It’s a workshop designed to teach you how to take reality and turn it into fiction to heal.
² https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/01/magazine/kenneth-branagh-interview.html
³ https://newrepublic.com/article/156388/rachel-cusk-reinvention-review-coventry-book-essays
⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/arts/television/midnight-mass-mike-flanagan.html
⁵ https://lithub.com/the-freedom-to-defy-expectations-an-interview-with-zinzi-clemmons/
