I spend a lot of time thinking about what other people are thinking or feeling- they could be real people or characters I am making up. It’s a natural aspect of always wanting to put emotions into words. I’ll say to myself, “how would I feel if my child was beaten up on the bus” or if “I accidentally swallowed a goldfish.” Many times I can draw on personal experience although not in the two examples I just mentioned. But when I can’t because I made it up or if it’s something I’ve just heard about secondhand, then I try to put myself in the other person’s head. I figure out how I would feel and how I would react and sometimes it is painfully real to me (and then of course I can draw on this when I write). But all this opening up might have a sort of numbing effect too. It’s a catch 22. Make yourself extra vulnerable so that you can experience as much as you can and then achieve some kind of emotional distance to be able to write about it- otherwise it comes out trite or reading like a Hallmark card. There has to be a disconnect. I know that it’s taken me about 15 years to even contemplate being ready to write about my best friend’s death, and that when I do it will be a melding of truth and fiction.
It’s almost as if I am always outside looking in, an observer and I can’t help myself. It’s in the way I’m wired. I once dated an actor/screenwriter and we broke up because I always felt as if I was auditioning. I disengaged in some weird way and at the time I thought it was his fault but now I’m wondering if it was all me.
I recently discussed this with a writer friend and she does the same thing. It’s like the part of your brain which finds inspiration for your creativity (in this case writing stories) is on all the time. Part of me is always trying to spin an angle, make an event in my life -either directly or vicariously experienced- snappier, more magical, turn it into something worth writing about. Work out how I can use it.
Here’s the thing though- does this make us more emotionally attached? Are we empathetic humans beings who really try to understand the pain and joy of others and ourselves, or are we just observers and distanced from true feeling? Because that part of me might seem to be right there listening to you spill your guts but it could also sitting at my desk narrating the whole story as quickly as my fingers can type it. Maybe you have to be more sensitive and intuitive and contemplative to want to capture the gamut of human emotion on paper but in order to do so, you have to be able to take a step back as well.
I am a worse case scenario kind of a gal, and I do know that what has saved me in the past when I’ve had to face the un-faceable has been my journal or painting or sculpting or gardening (which is another kind of art), and what will help in the future is knowing that eventually I will be able to write about it whatever it is.
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