Pen, Paper, and Existential Crisis: From Anxiety to Astrology via Therapeutic Fiction
I won’t be alone when I say that my understanding of what makes life meaningful has changed throughout my writing life, and also that my writing and my values are inextricably linked. All the main components stay the same and yet, as though an elf has poured all the bright sparkling pieces into a kaleidoscope and turned the barrel, each time I look I find something new. When I articulated this to myself, I had a small epiphany. (Can epiphanies be small?!)
This is why I write in so many different genres.
There is so much to explore, and so little time to do it in!
I write middle grade fiction, because the way children see and experience the world is so different to the way adults see and experience the world. Particularly in my Merryshields series, which is set in the pandemic and allows me to write and process some of that intense and peculiar and unusually long summer of isolation (anyone else remember six months of March 2020?) through a lens of magic and mystery and middle-grade mayhem.
I write contemporary domestic revenge drama (I’m not precisely sure how to define it yet, can you tell?!) because it provides a safe space to play out some of the what-ifs and the then-I’d-do-this of my darkest nightmares. It allows me to take my maternal anxiety, uncomfortable at best, and extrapolate the worst of it, to let it play out in a world I control, and which provides solace and company when the anxious thoughts leave me feeling stupid, breathless and alone.
I write spiritual non-fiction because writing my own demons sometimes feels helpful and sometimes feels utterly self-indulgent, and coming back to non-fiction gives me a place to offer kind, practical, common sense help to other people, outside of the narrowness of my mind. Charka balancing – not for everyone but for some, transformative. Ditto parenting with astrological moon signs (the next book coming). I love the feedback that tells me I helped, that someone’s life has been made better or easier by reading my words and taking actions I’ve recommended. It takes the edge off the selfishness of my own fictional dramas. (Whether that belief of selfishness is either necessary or accurate is something for an entirely different article.)
Finally (for now), I write time-travel adventure romance, because after all the angst and uncertainty and pain (I’m looking back to you, vengeance drama and querying hell), it is so much fun to write a romp in time, to create characters that I just love in an uncomplicated way, to talk with fictional grown-ups about things that are impossible but in a fantasy world exist. Pure joy in the writing, and (according to the emails I get from readers) unputdownable reading. That’s heart-glowing stuff.
Life feels too short – I’ve always been in a hurry to get there. Where there is remains unspecified, beyond a vague belief that I’ll know it when I feel it. These days, although I still feel that urgency pushing me on, I am wise to the fact that reaching the endpoint will not be accompanied by fanfares and a feeling of finality. In fact, the endpoint is never reached, stretching on and beyond the initial horizon of whatever project I have just completed. Case in point: I told myself I would be happy when I had completed a novel. And I was! When I wrote ‘The End’ in 2017, on my first full-length piece of narrative fiction, I was happy! For a few moments. Then the now-recognisable sensation sidled in – Now I have to get it published…
Cue querying hell, which many of you will be able to relate to.
Moving on quickly, it took me a long time to loosen the grip on the feeling of now I have to, on the next goal is… Certainly a big part of my evolution, which is ongoing, has been learning to STOP. Take time. Breathe. Learning to allow something to be where it is – to allow myself to be where I am! And if I don’t feel celebratory, that’s fine – but it’s still good to take my eye off the horizon for a second and look at what I’ve just done, whether that’s finishing a book or finishing a paragraph. I’m developing the understanding that the sense of urgency I feel is human-driven, not soul-driven. It feels as though it comes from within, but it’s exacerbated by a society that tells me that my worth lies in finance and productivity, only one of which I can control to any degree, and the other of which is undeniably (and contradictorily) enhanced by occasionally doing nothing.
How does writing make life meaningful? Or should I say, how do I use writing to find, clarify, and articulate the meaningful values in my life?
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- I can pin down ideas that I want to pass on.
Things that I can’t make my kids sit down and listen to – because who wants to listen to an adult giving you the answers when it’s so much more fun to fail gloriously on your own? It is their birthright to discover life on their own times, but perhaps it’s also my birthright to note down what I’ve learnt so far, in the hopes that it might be useful to them, somewhere down the line, even if only so they can raise their eyebrows with a wry smile and say I guess she knew what she was talking about, after all…
- (Somewhat related) I can help people
This isn’t just about wanting to impart wisdom that the kids won’t be interested in until they’re in their forties. This is more about the challenges and struggles and observations that don’t happen to everyone, and that aren’t often talked about aloud by those to whom they do. Maybe actual experiences, like miscarriage, or bereavement or yearning, states of mind like fear, worthlessness, or extreme maternal anxiety. Things I hope my children don’t suffer but which I know are suffered by plenty of other people who don’t have a tool like writing to find their way through it. Maybe my way of writing can reach those people and be that hand to hold, that voice that tells them This sucks, but you’re not alone.
- The value of faith and the gift of comfort
This is the trickiest one, the one I have to be bit careful with, because faith often implies religion, and specifically an attachment to an organised religion, which is not me or mine. For myself, the act of exploring faith through writing brings a clarity and comfort of its own, and perhaps a value I can provide is to share that comfort in all its myriad forms, in the knowledge that, while there are people who are secure in the faith they already have, there are equally many others whose curiosity lights up those areas of life that are not quite mainstream, where uncertainty can tiptoe forward and find stable ground in astrology and tarot, chakras and reiki, signs and synchronicities. Even meditation, maybe the most accessible of the ‘out-there’ practices, where stillness allows you to access your own vast and infinite inner world, falls here. Those are gifts and comforts I can give, through practical reiki, through astrology and tarot readings, through reiki sessions, and perhaps most of all, through writing.Subscribed
This is what keeps me writing, in all the different ways and genres and for all the different purposes. In healing myself, I help to heal others; in learning how I heal, I show others how they might heal, too; in helping myself through fiction and in practice, I offer others companionship, escape, joy, recognition, acceptance, and hope.
And all of these things together, in a glorious kaleidoscope of shapes and bright colours, give value and meaning to my life.
What does your kaleidoscope look like? What shapes and colours do you find there, and how do they bring value to your life and to your writing?