Entering Our Prisons: Writing the Hard Stuff

I wasn’t really sure what I was going to write for today’s post, but when I read Sherman Alexie’s piece in The Atlantic, it sparked an idea. Well, it’s his idea and I’m going to riff off of it. You can read the whole Sherman Alexie piece here, but this is the section that really stuck with me since it’s so universally applicable.

“The line also it [sic] calls to mind the way we tend to revisit our prisons. And we always go back. This is not only true for reservation Indians, of course. I have white friends who grew up very comfortably, but who hate their families, and yet they go back everything [sic] thanksgiving and Christmas. Every year, they’re ruined until February. I’m always telling them, “You know, you don’t have to go. You can come to my house.” Why are they addicted to being demeaned and devalued by the people who are supposed to love them? So you can see the broader applicability: I’m in the suburb of my mind. I’m in the farm town of my mind. I’m in the childhood bedroom of my mind.

I think every writer stands in the doorway of their prison. Half in, half out. The very act of storytelling is a return to the prison of what torments us and keeps us captive, and writers are repeat offenders. You go through this whole journey with your prison, revisiting it in your mind. Hopefully, you get to a point when you realize there was beauty in your prison, too. Maybe, when you get to that point, “I’m on the reservation of my mind” can also be a beautiful thing. It’s on the res, after all, where I learned to tell stories…So there is power in this. I get to pick and choose what the prison means to me, float in between the prison bars, return in my mind when and how I want to. We’re all cursed to haunt and revisit the people and places that confine us. But when you can pick and choose the terms of that confinement, you, and not your prison, hold the power.”

I was really moved by the line “I think every writer stands in the doorway of their prison. Half in, half out.” This feels so true to me. Lately I’ve been noticing that all my new ideas have to do with containment. Either society is boxing in my characters or their bodies are setting limits that seem downright oppressive or their personal demons, their pasts, are keeping them from free ranging in their futures. And looking back at all of my current work, these same ideas are present. I also keep hitting on slavery as a theme. My jinni trilogy is all about jinn being trafficked or forced into serfdom and a new idea I’ve been kicking around deals with my characters being bought and sold, as well. Clearly, I have an obsession. So what’s the deal?

I think it must have to do with my own “prison.” It’s interesting to look at the topics I fixate on and the situations I put my characters through in light of my own memories and perception of my past–and being able to claim that prison without fear of judgement because, as Alexie says, “I get to pick and choose what the prison means to me.” What’s funny is that I didn’t realize how much my prison was influencing me. All along, I’ve been straddling the divide between past and present, prison and freedom. I suppose I’ve had some awareness of the common threads in all my work; I write YA because being a teen was such a confusing, formative, and insane time in my life and I want my books to be a safe harbor for teens as they try to navigate their own adolescence. But I didn’t realize just how much I was returning again and again to my own personal prison or that I wanted, needed, to be there. I like that Alexie challenges us to rest in that place, in fact suggests that it’s downright necessary. It’s a gift to be able to return to your prison by choice, always with the key to get out, but with an eye on the bars and why they’re there and what they keep us from. Writing the hard stuff necessitates sacrifice and commitment on the part of the writer–you need to willingly place your comfort on the alter of the work, an offering of the heart to the jealous god of story. Only then will you really be able to pierce the emotional core of your characters and discover the heart of your story. The places you shy away from exploring could be the dark corners of your prison, as seen through the eyes of your characters. To do your job–to shed light on those areas–the writer needs to plunge into that difficult space and stay there (but always with one foot out, so as to remain sane and healthy).

I’m not exactly sure how this idea of the prison is going to affect my work, but it goes a long way toward helping me articulate it for others (why I write what I write, etc.) and affirms the choices I have made for the stories I need to tell. I think some of the most powerful stories are ones in which the protagonist recognizes their prison and is able to escape it, on their own terms and with their dignity intact or restored. When the writer revisits that painful place and brings back a boon for the rest of us, it is not only the beginning of wisdom, it’s a generous and beautiful act of courage.

Here’s to breaking through bars and holding the keys in our pockets.