Sometimes you have to go to a dark place in order to write with authenticity. Usually I can do this without getting too fucked up over it. But sometimes, some stories...well, they've got little barbs and they stick, you know?
My current project is a short story about sisters. One of them dies suddenly and the other is left to close off her life. Of course there's a lot more to it than that.
Or maybe there isn't.
The relationship between sisters is a secret language. But it doesn't translate. I'm trying to capture the truth of it through writing, but it's eluding me. I have a sister, and to suddenly lose her would be a unique disaster scenario. When I go to that place, my brain has a strange reaction. It can't separate us. It can't stitch together a reality in which I am alive and my sister is not. Oddly, I can imagine us both dead with relative ease. Yeah, I'm morbid, but that's not the point. What a strange thing my brain has done, forming mysterious defensive neural connections and pathways around that relationship. I can't even get properly devastated thinking about the possibility, because my brain regards this scenario as impossible.
Sometimes I work myself into a state from lingering too long in those lightless corners of the mind. That's when I need to lay on the floor. But this is a far weirder situation, trying to access the ugly place and finding the way barred.
This is my first attempt to explore the sister bond in my writing. Now I wonder if I've been subconsciously avoiding it.
What weird things have surprised you when you tried to write about them?
My current project is a short story about sisters. One of them dies suddenly and the other is left to close off her life. Of course there's a lot more to it than that.
Or maybe there isn't.
The relationship between sisters is a secret language. But it doesn't translate. I'm trying to capture the truth of it through writing, but it's eluding me. I have a sister, and to suddenly lose her would be a unique disaster scenario. When I go to that place, my brain has a strange reaction. It can't separate us. It can't stitch together a reality in which I am alive and my sister is not. Oddly, I can imagine us both dead with relative ease. Yeah, I'm morbid, but that's not the point. What a strange thing my brain has done, forming mysterious defensive neural connections and pathways around that relationship. I can't even get properly devastated thinking about the possibility, because my brain regards this scenario as impossible.
Sometimes I work myself into a state from lingering too long in those lightless corners of the mind. That's when I need to lay on the floor. But this is a far weirder situation, trying to access the ugly place and finding the way barred.
This is my first attempt to explore the sister bond in my writing. Now I wonder if I've been subconsciously avoiding it.
What weird things have surprised you when you tried to write about them?
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