Would you go there?

7/8/2013

Pity the poor paedophile?
If he were real, the narrator of my flash Betrayed, would be wishing he’d been tried as leniently as Neil Wilson, last week awarded a suspended sentence for child sexual abuse because the thirteen-year-old victim was said to be predatory. No wonder I’ve been feeling uneasy about this little story, when we live in a society where misogyny runs so deep some readers could miss the point and side with my nasty protagonist.

Why do I feel such a need to distance myself from my creation? We all know a writer is not her characters, and her main duty is to bring them alive and speak their truth, however distasteful it may be. Some novelists have no hesitation in washing their dirty linen in public, sacrificing the secrets of the marriage bed for the sake of a good story. Am I less of a writer if I hesitate, if there are some areas where my keyboard will not go?

We have to fight to make space for our writing if it’s to flourish. Sometimes this is on a practical level, shutting the door on friends and family to give us the time to write. Sometimes it’s a battle of the mind, freeing ourselves up from our inner critics telling us we can’t. Perhaps I’m afraid if I get too deep down and dirty, the muck just won’t wash off.

Yet a writer needs to have a life away from her fiction, and to fight for that just as hard. Isn’t it reasonable to want to avoid the one contaminating the other? Especially in the age of Twitter, when a writer is required to promote herself as well as her words.

I guess I’m in the process of working out how far I’m prepared to go.
What about you? Are there topics you shy away from for fear that people will misjudge your motives or do you have the courage to follow your ideas where angels fear to tread?

21 Comments

Clare O'Dea link

8/8/2013 08:57:50 am

A very engaging and interesting post! It's so true what you say about fighting to make space for writing. I believe it's important to draw a line around things that are truly personal. It's OK to be inspired by your own experiences but it's risky to mine your history too directly (and usually obvious), unless you are writing a memoir of course. Safia at topofthetent recommended your site to me. I'm about to write my 50th post too!

Annecdotist

8/8/2013 01:57:02 pm

Thanks, Clare, and welcome to my blog.
I'm going to pop across and have a look at yours and hopefully catch your 50th too!

Charlotte Stirling link

8/8/2013 05:18:54 pm

I think you are very brave to write about this. I have never been able to write about cruelty to animals or write a scene about killing an animal. Just can't go there. Ironically, I can write gory, psychologically twisted scenes with ease :)

Annecdotist

9/8/2013 03:53:42 am

Thanks, Charlotte, still not sure if it's brave or foolhardy but, on the other hand, I can't not write about things that matter. I think my difficulty was around being sure it's authentic, not just deliberately trying to shock, and not in some way, perhaps inadvertently, contributing to the exploitation. I've had a peek at your blog and it looks as if you don't shy away from difficult themes either.

Greg link

9/12/2013 06:59:11 am

When I was in college, I took a creative writing class from Lorrie Moore. Her advice was to write something that would shock your parents. An interesting concept, but I think her point, like yours, is that these areas we keep secret are where the true stories lie.

Annecdotist

9/12/2013 09:13:28 am

Thanks for sharing this, Greg. Emma Darwin says something similar about writing as if your parents are dead. (And I've got a post coming on this soon.) I think I agree it's worth pushing beyond the ordinary, otherwise what's the point, but it can be difficult when it's also known that some readers do conflate writers with their characters.

Annecdotist

12/2/2014 01:22:09 am

See also the implied author:
http://crimsonleague.com/2014/02/09/the-implied-author-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/

Charli Mills

14/9/2014 01:52:57 pm

Sometimes we do need distance from our writing and not because the topic or characters are particularly hard. It's more that the act of writing goes deep and we can't stay in those deep places. Like deep sea diving--you have limited time and endurance. On the other hand, if we write shallow, skirting those deep places, we don't write true. At a retreat, I learned to call this act, "writing into your truth." The interesting thing about it, writing into your truth isn't always literal. The subconscious seems to feed those deep places. Maybe we've experienced sexual abuse as a child, or dealt with children who have, or are moved by stories in the media, however, that doesn't mean we will write about child sexual abuse, but in some way that experience or witnessing will feed an expression in a different type of story. And if we write about childhood sexual abuse it doesn't mean we are fictionalizing a personal experience. Sometimes I'm surprised by the characters and stories that I find deep within, but almost always, I'm drawn to expressing these stories in a hero's journey. Maybe that's my own truth--that I'm always seeking ways to be brave, that I believe we can face the abyss and walk away with the elixir. And yes, we need that break as writers and I call my breaks by different names: bird-watching, river dipping, walking in the woods, sitting on rocks, gardening, traveling, exploring, cooking and eating! :-)

Annecdotist

16/9/2014 05:44:24 am

Oh, Charli, you've described it so beautifully and really helped me understand my own processes.. I entirely agree about writing an emotional truth and I think that if one's personal story is rather painful it better – both for the writer and reader – who tell it in a different way (part of why I'm suspicious of memoir).
And I see where I part company with you on the hero's journey: my experiences of being brave and about letting other people off the hook, though not something I particularly aspire to these days.

Annecdotist

16/9/2014 05:48:00 am

Also meant to add about writing your truth. So agree, and my post today just happened to feature a novel about the difficulty of living one's truth
http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/annecdotal/layers-of-history-the-tell-tale-heart-by-jill-dawson-and-truths-by-rebecca-s-buck-and-a-zodiac-flash

Charli Mills

16/9/2014 02:27:34 pm

These discusses let us look at process and share ideas, shaping those inner thoughts. Your posts draw them out.

Charli Mills

14/9/2014 02:05:41 pm

And no pity for any pedophile! Pisses me off when pedophiles get a break--"oh, he's an old man now..." or "she wanted it, he couldn't resist her temptations..." or "he was just playing, he did mean to tickle her there..." Why do people do this? Because they are so scared, so shamed, so stupid, whatever the reason, to speak up. It's easier to beat down the victim and tell her to shut up, tell her she's predatory or tell her she's delusional than it is to acknowledge the sick truth of the pedophile. A case in Montana just this past year had a similar, but more tragic outcome to the one you linked to. The victim was a 14 year old girl, the pedophile her teacher. He raped her and was let off with probation because the girl "looked older than her age and was in control of the situation." He got one month in prison and she committed suicide. This pandering to pedophiles in secular and religious cultures gets my ire up! So I thought I'd respond separately to the writing of this topic, and the topic itself.

Annecdotist

16/9/2014 05:54:08 am

It's fascinating, isn't it, and so disturbing how we can rationalise such terrible acts. Right now we've got Oscar Pretorius's murder of his girlfriend reframed as the poor man who didn't realise what was going on. Another British case last year was when a music teacher was taken to court for sexual abuse of his students, now adults. One of the witnesses in the case testifying against him committed suicide apparently because the court procedure was so gruelling and for some crazy reason she'd been barred from having their repeated support her through it, supposedly because it would corrupt her evidence. It was a dreadful case, as I remember it, she was a talented musician and mother, getting on well with her life despite the awful things that had been done to her, yet the judicial system simply repeated her experience of abuse.

Charli Mills

16/9/2014 02:44:15 pm

Just this morning here in Sandpoint I read about a middle school teacher who was let go because last spring he texted two of his students, referring to a dream he had about their naked and proud manhoods. His defense? It was a joke that went too far because he was drinking. Yet half the school is up in arms that he was let go, minimizing the content of the text. If you are a 12-year old boy, your world shifts after that. No getting it back. For the poor woman made to repeat her abuse in court, she had to put herself back in the danger zone she's probably fought to escape from the remainder of her life. It's a physical reaction and I think an abomination of the court system to put a person into that state. Ah, so sad, the loss of her life. So sad her talent had to be tied to the most dreadful thing she had to do. I'm not sure she could have managed a memoir, even had she thought of it. Yet, we on the outside, more buffered from the raw experience can do justice to make sense of these dynamics in stories. The other part of the hero's journey for me, I suppose, is that I long for something to be gained--wisdom, justice, clarity. There's just so much lost in these incidents. And there are way too many of these incidents to say they are far and few between.

Annecdotist

17/9/2014 09:04:56 am

In my book texting your students about anything unrelated to their education, drunk or not, should be a disciplinary offence. I wonder if there was already a culture in which teachers wanted to be chums with their students instead of getting on with their job, if his colleagues were unable to see anything wrong.
Regarding the case in Britain, there was quite a reaction afterwards and I think some recognition that court practices should change. From what I remember, and of course only what was reported second-hand, I don't think she felt herself to be dreadfully damaged by the original abuse – or at least, not feelings she had any unfinished business to address – but was just doing her civic duty by being a witness for the prosecution.
Mmm, I'm intrigued by the similarities and differences between you and me regarding our approaches: I'm much more pessimistic about whether there's much to be gained from the hero's journey – but I do wish you well on yours.

Charli Mills

15/9/2014 03:16:19 pm

Your link to Betray has betrayed us! :-)

Annecdotist

16/9/2014 05:56:13 am

Profound apologies, I'd been betrayed by the site that initially published it having folded, but sorry I neglected to change the link when I got it republished elsewhere.
All fixed now and only 363 words so shouldn't take long to read.

Charli Mills

16/9/2014 02:56:47 pm

Terrific! Thanks for fixing the link. Well-written. You are brave to take on these characters. He's so believable in his self-pity for having got caught and completely ignores any wrong-doing. The chilling part is that he thinks he can still renew his clutches on the girl. And here is where child sexual abuse gets murky--typically these creeps don't beat or threaten a child. They are masters at finding vulnerability, grooming, gifting, then expecting the payout for the attention. Maybe this is in part why society sees the victim as the one to blame--she was rebellious, delinquent, drinking or doing drugs. She "knew what she was doing." Great piece of writing.

Annecdotist

17/9/2014 09:07:38 am

Thanks, Charli, and you can see why I feel uncomfortable about my capacity to write such a horrible thing. And back when I wrote it, I thought it was such a teeny tiny story – little did I know I'd find your blog and your wonderful flash fiction challenges!

Charli Mills

17/9/2014 04:52:17 pm

What I like about literature is the endless possibilities of how we write about these topics, looking at all sides, gaining insights from both the dark places and the light. It's good that we are different writers, which is why I love the weekly compilations to see the different insights and approaches. Ha, ha...now you know there are even tinier stories!

Annecdotist

20/9/2014 08:49:54 am

I agree, Charli. One of the versions of the bio I submit with my short stories goes "Anne Goodwin writes fiction for the freedom to contradict and reinvent herself" – why should we restrict ourselves to one version of the story when we can explore so many sides? And thanks for teaching me how much can be crammed into 99 words.

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