How to Write About Hard Things (Part 1)
How to start when tackling difficult subjects in your writing
There’s a lot that’s been said about the Babe.net piece on Aziz Ansari, but beneath the most strident arguments around consent culture and what is and isn’t sexual assault, there is a discussion about the actual writing taking place. There’s been criticism that the writer didn’t write the piece with care, that it’s flippant, that it’s written in a salacious style geared toward clicks.
I agree. While “Grace’s” story is important and has opened much-needed conversations around the #metoo movement, dating etiquette and how we change our culture that shouldn’t be overshadowed, the tone and style of the piece didn’t sit well with me.
In many ways, I think young women (or anyone really) writing for an audience of young women are pushed towards this punchy, semi-sarcastic style of writing. It’s like the written equivalent of snapping your gum. It’s fun and easy to read — even fun to write (I’ve certainly had a few things published in this tone and style) — but young women writers and audiences need to be recognized for all their complexities and broadness as well. Which is to say, I’m not saying you can’t write about hard things with humor, but there’s a difference between humor and an eye roll. Writing about trauma and tragic events doesn’t have to be all doom-and-gloom, but they should be handled with respect.
This is the first in a series of posts that I’ll be writing about “How to Write About Hard Things.” If you’re trying to be the next Tucker Max, you’ll probably want to skip this series, but if you’re trying to write about real shit that’s going to endure through the ages… then, this maybe, might help you pull that off.
If you have questions or want to make sure these posts cover certain terrain, tweet us or contact us and I’ll be sure to get back to you. Now, let’s get into it.
The Struggle
One of the things I struggled with most about teaching undergraduates nonfiction was giving them a grade for how well they told the stories of their various traumas. My students would turn in essays about childhood abuse, sexual assault, deportation, death, dealing with parents who struggled with addiction, and there I was: red ink pen poised to mark off points for the passive voice.
Writing about the hard things IS hard. And sometimes, particularly when you’re a member of a marginalized group, the only thing you feel like you have to offer the writing world are stories of your struggle. This can be an even more difficult place to enter into writing creative nonfiction.
I like to tell my students that writing is a lot like weight lifting. You wouldn’t walk into the gym for the first time and be frustrated you can’t benchpress 500 pounds. You have to begin by focusing on your form and building up your muscle mass. Writing is the same way. You have to first focus on your craft and grow comfortable on the page before you find yourself in a place to tell your BIG story well.
Where to Start
Always start with the Truth (in a future post, I’ll go deeper about Truth versus truth). Let’s say you want to write a personal essay about your mother passing away, but every time you try to, you just can’t. There’s an emotional block there. Maybe the emotional block is there because you feel conflicted about how your mother treated you or it’s there because you’re still processing losing her.
Some writers, decide to write around the emotional block. That doesn’t work. Your reader will:
- Be left with lots of questions.
- Be able to sense you’re not writing about what you really want to write about.
- Not gain any new insights from reading your work.
Good work, even fiction, risks something. To tell the Truth is to be vulnerable. If you’re not comfortable with that degree of vulnerability around a certain subject, find a different way. That subject will still be there when you’re ready to write about it. You never have to write about or publish anything you’re not ready to share. But you must recognize you’re not there yet versus trying to send some watered down version of the Truth out into the world.
You can start small. Maybe you’re not ready to write the Mother of All Mother essays, but you can write about one specific memory or one small aspect of your relationship with your mother. When you write about the small things, they have the ability to be just as rewarding to read about than the MAJOR things because they can still be rich and complex. This is why literally anyone can write a memoir as long as you’re unraveling a knot of something complicated.
For example, Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, which was just nominated for a National Book Circle Award, takes the long-view of her life through the lens of weight. In this memoir, Gay strikes what I believe to be the perfect balance between telling the Truth and being vulnerable, but not feeling pressured to write IT ALL. She discusses how she was the victim of sexual assault by boys she went to school with when she was a pre-teen. She gives all we need to know to understand how it has shaped her life, without it having to become voyueristic. It’s an excellent memoir.
It’s a balancing act. At the other end of the spectrum, you have writers who are known for being hilarious like Samantha Irby, whose collection of essays made all of 2017’s Best lists, or Phoebe Robinson — the half of 2 Dope Queens that isn’t Jessica Williams — who has written for TV shows like Broad City and Portlandia and has a second collection of essays in the works. But when you read their essay collections, you’ll see that that humor is anchored in truth and there are breaks in the laugh track for serious moments of reflection and even sadness. This is what adds richness to writing. It’s like how red lipstick makes teeth look whiter in comparison.
It Doesn’t All Happen in the First Draft
When I work with writing students, I often feel like I’m a doctor poking at them going, “Does this hurt? How about this?” Until I see them wince a little. That’s where we begin to excavate.
After you celebrate the huge accomplishment of actually finishing something, then it’s time to go back in and dig around for what makes it better, to figure out what’s missing. When I first started getting good at writing, my goal was to write beautiful things. I always hesitated to pick at anything or it might become messy and ruined. I was only half right.
You ruin the current version, but generally to wind up with something even better. Beautiful essays are like an undisturbed pond. They can be nice to look at, but all of the life and messy bits are underneath the water. Don’t be afraid to dive deeper, to explore what’s down there in the muck. Then spread it out on the page and figure out what to make of it.
What’s Next?
In the next part of this series, I’m going to give you some questions you can ask yourself during the revision process to help you uncover areas where you could go deeper in your writing.
It can be hard to figure out where to go deeper by yourself. It can be like having something stuck in your teeth; you don’t see it until someone else points it out to you. With Penmob, because you work with a team of editors, you get a lot of different perspectives and become aware of a broader range of things going on in your writing than if you were to work with one individual editor.
