Should You Tell Your Story More Than Once?
Unpacking the boxes one essay at a time
Keep an eye on this space in the next few weeks.
I’m on the Writing Council for an exciting new platform called Jotter which will be launching soon!
It’s particularly for longform writers (at this stage). There’s Medium for short form writers, but Medium isn’t great for anything longer than about 2K words.
Where do you put your novel in progress? Your serialized fiction? The sci fi dystopian romance novel you’ve finished but can’t find a home for?
I’m excited by what’s developing at Jotter. Start prepping and polishing your first chapters and I’ll keep you posted!
Question of the Week
“I have an important story I want to share, how do I make sure I get it right?”
Imagine a truck pulls up in your driveway one morning and delivers a shipping container full of boxes to your house.
Just drops it in your front yard. No notice, no explanation.
“What’s happening?” you ask the truck driver. “I didn’t order this. What am I meant to do with it?”
He shrugs. “Don’t ask me. I’m just the delivery guy.”
That’s how big events in our lives feel much of the time. Unwelcome boxes dumped at our doorstep.
The mistake of only writing once
If you’ve had a big life event — many of us have had those unwelcome boxes dumped in our yard— it’s easy to think you need to write one perfect story about it.
People spend months or years trying to perfect that single piece of writing.
The event is important, so the piece needs to reflect that importance. It needs to make an impact. Help others who are going through the same thing. Warn people. Comfort people. Reassure.
It’s a lot of pressure to place on one piece of writing. A paralyzing amount.
And if you do manage to get that perfect piece? What then? How do you share it in a way that reaches the right people? The people you want to help or inform.
More pressure on our single piece of writing.
Most of us can agree, it would be impossible to sort out all the boxes in a shipping container on your own in a day. In the same way, it’s impossible to process big events in just one story. When an event or circumstance changes your life, there’s a lot to unpack. We’re allowed to revisit it in our writing to do that unpacking.
Writing as therapy (and not)
There’s a stupid debate in writing: do you write for yourself or the reader? Whenever I see it I cringe. It can leave you wondering: “Is what I write selfish and self-serving?” “Should I just write what I think others want?”
It’s stupid debate because the answer is always “write for both”. Writers write what we hope readers will be interested in. We write relatable stories so readers can feel less alone. So they can see themselves on the page. Published writing is always for the reader.
But it’s also for us. We write what interests us; what we want to share, learn, reflect on. We work out what we think or feel about an issue through the writing process. Writing, undeniably, can be therapy.
Writing about the same circumstances over and over isn’t boring or selfish. It’s unpacking boxes. It’s working out your perspective on an issue as your life changes. Stories change as we change — even old ones.
How that plays out in your writing career
My very first personal essay was about living with Crohn’s Disease. It was published in a tiny health magazine. The kind they give away for free at petrol stations because it’s really a supplement catalog in disguise. Getting sick in my 20s — for almost my entire 20s — was life altering for me, as most significant life events are. And, like that box delivery, it was sudden and unexpected.
When I first wrote about it, I just talked about the facts. But over the years, I’ve approached the same story from a dozen angles.
I wrote about how it feels to be a parent when you’re unwell in my Scary Mommy piece I Couldn’t Physically Parent My Own Child — Living With Crohn’s Disease.
I wrote about the uncertainty of living with an immune disorder in I’m Not Scared of Death But I Can’t Stop Asking This One Question.
Being immunosuppressed during a pandemic gave my story another angle to unpack.
My second marriage in my 40s bought up The Guilt of Being Chronically Ill.
Last week, over 15 years after my first essay on Crohn’s, I had another piece commissioned on this topic. This time I wrote about how a book helped me deal with the loneliness of an invisible illness.
Each time it I write about it, it helps me process and reframe a difficult part of my life.
People come to writing as a way of going in search of themselves.
As Steve Almond, New York Times bestselling author and writing teacher, writes, “People come to writing as a way of going in search of themselves. They are trying to process volatile feelings that went unexpressed in their families of origin, to revisit unresolved traumas. They are writing about what they can’t get rid of by other means. This applies to fiction, by the way, as well as non-fiction..”
Whether you’re writing personal essays, short stories, fiction, or a memoir, feel free to revisit your own story and crack open another box. You might discover something completely new.
Any help in writing non-fiction about life/politics/ social issues?
Compared to everyone else's writing on here, I know my writing sucks. Its like driving a car over a road filled with bumps and potholes, and I want to make it better!
This is so encouraging. I've never really thought about it this way.