Lannie.net

A while ago I read some random fanfic that disturbed me so much that I kept thinking about it on and off for the next few weeks. Even still when I think back on it I kind of want to break out the brain bleach. Kudos to the writer for grossing me out so immensely – I’ve seen and read quite a bit of horrible fiction in my day (eleven year old me was completely cool with reading things like Stephen King’s It and everything Dean Koontz ever wrote) so it was quite surprising to even stumble over something that made me pause.

It is probably because it was kind of related to some disturbing stuff I’ve written earlier this year in the League plot with Irina. Which is a pretty horrible story in itself (as Brenda said, Irina’s story is two parts tragedy and one part overwhelming triumph) but it’s the kind of stuff you can choose to gloss over, shrug and move on. It’s not until you really start thinking about the things she’s gone through that your heart kind of breaks.

Anyway; because of that horrible story I started thinking about the Irina plotline again. I thought I’d gotten over it by the time I’d written First Light but no, turns out that this story I read it all came back. So I wrote 1400 words of bittersweet bile the other night and thoroughly disgusted and disturbed myself in the process. Enough to hate the story, until I read it back yesterday and realised it was a GOOD story. Just… you know, disturbing.

The thing I’ve always been kind of apprehensive about with writing is that people might read it and come to conclusions about me. That I must be horrible or twisted to write about things like this. How do I even get to the point where I want to write this; and why do I torture your characters so much; there must be something wrong with me, etcetera. I’ve heard people say that about other writers too: “Wow he must really hate women” or “I wonder what his relationship with his mother was like, see what he does to the mother in X story?”

And that terrifies me because I like to think of myself as a fairly well-adjusted person, and I don’t want people to look me in the eye and think things like that because they read my story. Writing is my personal brain bleach, people! My catharsis!

And then Brenda said something beautiful that I’ve chosen to believe from now on. She said (can’t quote unfortunately, I lost the chat session) something like: You don’t just write what you know. Writing what you know will be good for maybe 2, 3 stories? So you write out of empathy, to deal with such things that you see, hear, are exposed to. I think it’s much more disturbing that some people see or hear something horrible that happens to someone and they just shrug and move on. You write it out to try and deal with it, and the painful part is your empathy running rampant, feeling with the character. This is much more healthy.

And I think that’s true. Or maybe I just choose to believe that’s true because I like to believe the best about myself. That’s just the way I’m wired. :’)