writer's block & several suggested sets of keys
on writing about trauma, writing for results, and emotionally regulating throughout.
dear jojo,
i got a notification that my dad is going to have a parole hearing on 02/23 and i am able to speak at the hearing. part of the reason why he’s in prison is because of the years of abuse i endured under him growing up. i’m being given the option to write a victim impact statement and i want to write something impactful and to the point that highlights the abuse that occurred over time and also how it’s affected me since then. i am very against him ever getting out of prison. the only problem is i’m not a great writer and i’m not sure where or how to start.
signed,
writer’s block
dear block,
first and foremost, my advice to you is to be gentle with yourself. this is a massive emotional undertaking to revisit your childhood abuse and put it into words, and the process can be extremely draining. so take naps, stay hydrated, and give yourself permission to walk away from it when it becomes overwhelming or when you hit a dead end. remember that writing something is always better than writing nothing, and that a shitty first draft is sometimes the only way to get to a more cohesive, better written second draft. be patient with yourself and remind yourself that what you are doing requires great emotional courage. and then use that courage to speak your truth.
when i need to write something impactful, when i really want it/need it to land, what i tend to do first is just write a long, messy first draft. think total stream of consciousness: whatever thoughts come into your head or ask to be written, just write them down. don’t analyze them. don’t wonder if you’re making sense or not or if your sentences are too long. the idea isn’t to write something good, it’s just to get it all out. you’re emotional and it’s a lot of shit to be working through and thinking about, so you want to just purge it from your brain. once it’s on the paper, you gain more distance between yourself and the ideas, so you’re able to read it more objectively than you’d be able to read your thoughts. too little distance makes anything blurry. you basically want to see your emotions in words, not thoughts. thoughts are too abstract, too confusing, too all over the place, especially when we’re triggered or talking about deep, traumatic issues. you know how when you’re talking to your best friend about something you’re going through, it helps you to see more clearly what it is you’re even feeling? writing can also work as a clarifying agent.
that’s step one: figuring out what you’re feeling and what you want to say. after you word vomit it all up, you can give it a few hours or sleep on it before you go back to work so you feel more mentally fresh. give yourself breaks frequently and for however long you need. once it’s on the page those ideas exist separately from you, and you can revisit them when you’re ready. coming back to something the next day always evokes new insights and responses to whatever it is you wrote. your ideas can also start to crystallize when you take time between drafts: maybe you wrote it all out and it was messy and cathartic and all over the place, and not touching it for another day or two really lets you understand which parts of it you want to keep or what you want to expand on.
when you’re ready to face it all again and do the work of digging through it, you can start again. sometimes i’ll word vomit a bunch of shit up and then when i go to do a second draft i just trash the first draft completely. getting it cleared emotionally can sometimes be enough get me to a place where i can just sit down and write it when i start again. other times i’ll go through my first draft and highlight the sentences or ideas that i think convey it best, the ones i want to keep and weave the rest of the piece around. once you’ve assembled some of the core ideas or most emotionally impactful bits and pieces, you can write around them. maybe you have a sentence about what it was like when you were five, or seven, and the abuse you endured under your father; and then maybe you have another about where you are now. and since you have these two points you’re working between, you can structure your statement accordingly and just write about the in-between times. but regardless which pieces you choose to work with, you’ll have a basic structure and flow, which is infinitely easier to work with than a completely blank document.
as for the actual words you’re putting down onto the paper, i think the focus in any good emotional writing is just honesty with yourself, which is a skill that as an abuse survivor you’ve already been cultivating your whole life. abuse tells us that we can’t trust ourselves, that we’re not good enough, that what happened to us wasn’t that bad and therefore we shouldn’t be complaining. the process of reparenting ourselves after a traumatic childhood is the work of learning rigorous self-honesty and paying attention. we have to work ten times harder than someone who didn’t go through that kind of upbringing, but always the rewards of doing this work are immense. center yourself on the honesty you’ve learned over the years and the love you’ve had to fight tooth and nail to give to yourself, and write from that place. write from the place that knows you didn’t deserve even a second of the abuse you endured. write from the place that advocates for yourself and tells your abusers and gaslighters to fuck off. write from the place that sets firm boundaries, write from the place that makes your bed and grinds the coffee at night so it’s ready in the morning when you’re still sleepy and won’t feel like doing it, write from the place that you have fought to get to. and don’t worry about whether or not what you’re writing is any good or not; that’s a question for the future. right now you are responsible for just writing, and taking care of yourself, and getting out what needs to come out. translating that honesty into writing can be hard because we get caught in our heads about what good writing is & isn’t. the one thing all good writing has is that it’s honest, even if it’s fiction.
if writing proves to be too difficult or too emotionally fucked, you can do a voice recording instead. speaking and writing use two totally different brains and skill sets, and sometimes you need a combination of a few different parts of your brain working together to really tell the story you are trying to tell. maybe you need to primal scream in your car, or listen to the saddest songs you can find, or finger paint as if you were six years old again to try and access your inner child’s thoughts. i think the good writers become good specifically because they utilize all the different parts of their brain to tell their stories. if you can’t write a good first draft, or if you find you can’t write at all, you can do a voice recording pretending you’re talking to your best friend or to your inner child or a therapist instead. you can also call your best friend, instead of pretending to talk to them, and ask them if it’s ok to bitch or vent to them about what you’re trying to untangle. you can even record the conversation so you can have a more candid view of your own thoughts and feelings.
the voice recording is just another example of how to work smarter, not harder. you don’t have to be an award-winning poet or longlisted for the pulitzer or have an english degree or been writing for twenty years to communicate effectively. you just have to try different methods until you find what works best for you. maybe you try meditating and channeling whatever higher powers you call on in times like this. maybe you go for a long hike in the woods to be alone with your thoughts and let them percolate. maybe you design prompts for yourself to answer. when you have such a big question to answer, it can be overwhelming simply because of the fact that you don’t know where to start. conceptualizing your response as a series of answers instead of just one answer can then help you identify which questions (plural) you’re answering with your statement. for example: how did i feel growing up with my dad? how do i feel knowing my dad is locked away and can’t hurt me anymore? how does my childhood affect me now? these prompts not only break the statement into separate, smaller, more manageable pieces, they also give you a direction to work with. and then once you’ve done some work on it and you’re approaching the end, read it loud. reading aloud not only lets us catch things like spelling mistakes and funky grammar, it also helps because it sounds different verbally vs in our heads. you’ll catch more in one read-aloud session than in three rounds of editing where you’re only reading it in your head.
but all writing aside, just take care of yourself. if you don’t write the perfect victim statement or even if you don’t write one at all, you’ve already done so much. you survived unimaginable abuse and horrors, and now you’re here, living a life free from those terrors, living in a way that resonates with and makes you happy. you have to recognize how far you’ve come, because otherwise a project like this can suck you right under. you have to be able to hold simultaneously how horrible everything was, and also that you are out now. you are safe. you are free. you are capable of listening to yourself and making your own decisions. and if your body can’t handle the visceral reaction to digging back into your old trauma right now, or you need to take two hour naps every afternoon every day between when you start and the hearing, or you throw up your hands and just submit a first draft because it’s too much, you have still done tremendous work and have already accomplished more than most humans could think of.
i think once you start you’ll be surprised that it takes way less time than you’re expecting. surround yourself with people who love you and bounce your ideas off of them. it will speed up the process and make the whole thing more grounding. who knows? it might also be tremendously healing, both to write it and to share the process of writing it with those who you love most in this world. stay hydrated and take a shower or bath and get a good night's sleep after working on something like this. treat yourself with kindness, because it’s not only yourself doing this work right now: it’s also your six year old self, and your eight year old, and all the other selves in between. and they need you to take care of yourself, so they can look into the future from where they are and see that they turn out okay. they need to know they have a future in which they’re safe.
p.s what you said about not being a good writer - who said that? who would even have the power to decide that? if it was externally gifted, than by that logic you can externally be gifted the opposite as well. and so i give you permission to call yourself a good writer. i give you permission to write a shitty first draft, and to keep working, and to surprise yourself with what comes out of you. i give you permission to use words as humans have always used words, to explore, to discover, to communicate. i give you permission to write and not worry about whether or not it’s good or bad. writing is not reserved for a certain mythical group of poets who live above the rest of us and sustain themselves on manna and honey. you are a writer. you are allowed to write. you are allowed to take up space. and you are doing a phenomenal job.
xoxo,
jojo
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