Why I Write the Terrible Things I Write

This post came from this essay in the sense there were a few lines I’ve heard repeatedly in a lot of conversations over the years, which got me thinking on these topics, but it’s not a response to said essay. So while I may be using it as a jumping off point as it’s the most recent time I’ve read these sorts of comments, it’s not about that other post and if you have problems with that essay, it’s best to take it to the original site in question.

[Rape]’s a part of our entertainment. Of course Top of the Lake or The Killing didn’t spare me from the gory details of their fictional gang-rapes. Why would they? We’re used to this. We aren’t horrified anymore because it happens so fucking often. Women are victimized, women are victimized, women are victimized. Bodies chopped up. Invaded. Buried. The end. Tune in next week. There is an entire Law and Order series dedicated to sexual crimes. We tune in to watch it with a tacit acceptance. A sigh. Yes, this happens. What a shame. We shrug and watch and feel better that fictional justice is meted out, but don’t worry about the fact that no one helped her in the moment.

This is, I think, a valid criticism worth a lot of discussion. Some authors have come out over the past few years to say no, in their fiction, their heroines will not experience rape. Yes it’s part of life for many, yes it happens in the “real” world, but it doesn’t have to happen in their fictional worlds. They are going to tell stories full of conflict and not have their heroines raped because it’s such a shortcut, an easy way to give a woman a painful backstory or explain a prickly personality.

Again, valid. I respect the hell out of that. That choice is no more wrong than my choice not to maim kittens in my books or another writer’s choice not to harm fictional children.

But I am coming out to say the opposite.

You write a lot of books, you start to notice themes you come back to again and again. I keep coming back to betrayal, self-reliance vs accepting help, self-harm and self-loathing, abandonment, the capacity to commit violence, insanity. I’ll probably continue writing those subjects. And for the foreseeable future, I will continue to write about sexual assault. Sometimes as part of backstory, sometimes in the novels themselves. Not every hero or heroine, not every female character, not in every book. But it will be ever-present in my fiction and it will never be off the table.

I am just as tired as others of seeing sexual violence, in particular (but not exclusively) against women, be treated as exploitative, titillating, and lazy storytelling. I’ve been really hurt by these depictions by authors who didn’t bother to understand the psychology of different survivors, or who treated sexual assault as a plot device with no consideration of realistic consequences. But I think the two responses–one of not having a heroine assaulted and one of approaching assault with care and nuance–are both valid and dovetail one another’s efforts to combat rape culture.

I write these stories, in short, because I need to. And I know others need to read them.

I wrote this post specifically because someone very close to me was molested as a child by a family member and to this day no one will talk about it with her. Her family won’t acknowledge it. She was repeatedly silenced as a young woman when she tried to come forward in an effort to protect another child, and when leaving an abusive marriage as an adult in the 70s, she was once again silenced. And the more I listened to her, the more I realized how often she’d been shut down and no one had said those very simple words–I believe you–because it made them uncomfortable to acknowledge it, the more determined I became to tell these stories and explore all facets of being a survivor.

The survivors who fight back.

The survivors who don’t.

The survivors who learn to be okay again.

The survivors who continue to struggle years later.

The survivors in denial.

The survivors who become self-destructive.

The survivors who are believed.

The survivors who are blamed.

The criticisms of, say, a show like Law & Order: SUV are understandable. My heart goes out to those who cannot stomach it and find it triggering. But there is no denying the number of survivors who find it cathartic–those who watched an experience start similar to their own but play out in a way where the victim was believed, where authorities fought for him or her. That catharsis is just as important and valid for them as the choice not to watch those stories.

Choosing to view or write these stories, to utilize them in order to help process and heal, and to safely explore in a self-controlled setting a subject that is about having control taken away, is valid and important.

My characters exist in worlds where sexual violence is a real, sometimes experienced threat, just like I and others in my life do. But unlike ours, these fictional worlds allow me to go beyond and show more. Men who force women aren’t romanticized. Consent matters. Survivors are believed and their experiences are validated. Wounds scar but heal. Assaulting and being assaulted has consequences. Characters find strength even when they’re bruised, broken, and betrayed. In stories, despite it being a fictional account, I can say in the text that I believe you. I believe this thing happened to you, and I’m sorry, and the world isn’t always fair to people who have been through that but you have and will continue to survive.

These are stories I still need to tell and to explore. What happened to Zara in Exhumed and how she continued to deal with it in Damaged was a story of hers I needed to tell and something I needed to explore. The other books of mine on my harddrive you’ve not read but that deal with these subjects are areas I needed to explore.

I just handed a book to my beta reader with a scene where a woman who has survived previous intimate partner violence fought back during an attempted date rape. It was difficult and ugly and a scene that would likely trigger people. I had to get drunk to write it. It still makes me queasy. But the story needed it, the character needed it, and I needed it. I needed that moment when she decides not to be frozen, or passive, or “nice” for once in her life; I needed the moment she faces the terror of saying “This is not okay” when it’s been ingrained in her to just lie back and accept; I needed the moment when she fights back; I needed the moment when she realizes that has just as many consequences as not fighting back. And as she says in the current WIP:

“They get away with it. They have everything. And I have to live with it. The times I didn’t fight back and the time I did. Every goddamn day, I live with it.”

My books will (likely) always explore what it means to live with it.

Above entertainment and to make a living, I write to give myself strength. I write to change the things that happen to me and others. I write to explore the people I know I’m not and the people I’m afraid I am. I write to process and to understand; I write for catharsis; I write to express trauma and transmute reality. I write to give the darkness in me a place to go. I write to have and to give hope.  And I write what I write because it’s necessary for me to survive.

I have nothing but respect for those who don’t want to live with it in fiction when they already do in their real lives, and who provide stories without rape. Many readers need that.

But no matter how weary the subject can make me, no matter how tired I am of this reality, I can’t. And it’s okay if my books aren’t for you because of that. I write for those who, for whatever reason, need these stories to be told.

I write stories about terrible things because I need to tell them.

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Note: This was a difficult thing for me to post. Behave in the comments.