Writing Tough Stuff: Five Tips to Make it Easier 

Writing Tough Stuff: Five Tips to Make it Easier 

Last summer and winter I tried (and tried) to write a short memoir essay about a short stint of living and working in a London pub during the late 1980s. The opening scene of the essay, in which, on my very first night there, I wake up to find an Alsatian dog lying outside my bedroom door, went fine. But after that?  The writing got boring and messy, and the pre-London backstory kept wanting to take over.

I couldn’t see it at the time, but now that the piece, “London A-Z: A Memoir” is finished and published, I think I understand why this piece was as stubborn and scary as that dog outside my bedroom door.

First, it’s been 37 years, and it’s hard to write about being young, impetuous and dangerously naïve. As I wrote about and cringed over my 24-year-old self, I kept self-censoring my middle-aged, writer self. (Oh, no!  Don’t tell them that!)  

Second, even when we’re writing about happy things, it’s challenging to reconcile the back-then details with our current memory or retrospective version of the story.    Nobody wants to read a memoir full of, “I did this. And then I did that.” But how to balance lively, engaging scenes with a narrative voice that doesn’t make us sound like a know-it-all smartie pants?

Finally–and you may have already guessed this—it was hard to write this short memoir essay because it was about a really sad and lonely time in my life.

As well as writing, I work in healthcare and I lead expressive and creative writing workshops. In my classes or patient interviews, I have been really bossy about not writing or telling our way into a place of pain or re-traumatization.

“Just get up and go for a walk,” I tell my students.  “Make yourself a cup of tea. Abandon the writing for another form of self-care.”

Now, why couldn’t I take my own advice here? While this little memoir wouldn’t move forward, it still yowled and growled and demanded to be written.

Five Tips for Writing About Difficult Experiences 

Write yourself a letter or a journal entry:  In her book, “Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within,” Natalie Goldberg urges us to “Write what disturbs you, what your fear, what you have not been able to speak about.” But when you write a letter to yourself about your writing fears, you may discover why or what about this piece “disturbs you.” Then, you have honest information to guide you as you move forward (or not).

Write in the second person: Not all pieces will lend themselves to the “you” voice.  In my experience, the second person works when you’re writing about being “other.” It sometimes works when there’s a dichotomy between the writer now and the protagonist back then (you!) in this story.   Stuck with a piece of nonfiction? Try one or two scenes in the “you” voice.  Just like going on a date, you’ll instantly know.

Use a non-literary “shell” or container:  After tinkering with this bloody essay for way too long, I woke up in the middle of the night to this question: “If I used the London A-Z Guide, a pocket-sized street atlas of the city of London, could I contain and structure the story and get it told? Next morning, I started with the letter “A,” and on it went from there.

Later, after the piece got published, a writer friend congratulated me on having written a hermit crab essay, which (thank you, Google!) The Writing Addict defines as “ … a style where a writer will adopt an existing form to contain their writing. These “forms” can be a number of things including emails, recipes, to-do lists, and field guides.”  The U.S.-published textbook, “Tell it Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction” also includes a chapter on non-traditional essay structures and forms.

Find editorial and emotional distance: Most writing teachers tell us to abandon our rough drafts for long enough to give us distance from the work. It’s been 37 years, and I now live over 3,000 miles away from both London and my native Ireland. So temporal and spatial distances from the story? No problem. But how about emotional distance?  Creating a shell around the work and writing it in the second person really helped. Or, to quote Brenda Miller from her “Brevity” craft essay:  “…. I did not feel the emotional weight of any of the material.” Plus, instead of feeling ashamed of my youthful bloopers and cluelessness, journaling about the story helped me to develop enough self-compassion for my younger self to actually tell the story.

Exploit the contradictions: A well-known travel guide and a tale about youthful fear and regrets.  I didn’t plan it this way, but they turned out to be a fine match. The alpha ordinariness of one (travel guide) served as a foil for the emotional depth and heartache of the other (youthful tale).  This form and structure also flirted with the dichotomy between what many or most folks assume about, or have experienced in, London and my personal, 1980s experiences.

In addition to writing my personal story, I wanted to shine a light on the issue of social class—a topic that, both in writing and real life, we often shy away from, but that I find myself writing about.

In this A-Z essay, I wrote; “How you see a place depends on what parts you are allowed or have the leisure to see …. Big cities look different when a hotel room key sits snug in your pocket.”

In many ways, the same is true of big stories about tough topics. Scary as they first seem, they can look and feel differently when you’ve taken the time to step back, self-reflect and then find the key–or keys–to unlock the power of your story and, most important, get it written.

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Irish native Áine Greaney lives and writes in Massachusetts, USA.  In addition to her published books, her personal essays have appeared or been cited in publications such as The New York Times; The Boston Globe Magazine; Best American Essays; The Mindful Word; The Daily Wisdom; KevinMD; World of Psychology; Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine; Tendon: Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine and other publications. As well as writing, she has led creative and wellness -writing workshops at various venues, including the International Women’s Writing Guild, the New Hampshire Writers Project and the National Writers Digest Conference.

Her website: www.ainegreaney.com

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips