The power (and pain) of vulnerability
Hitting you with some very Big Feelings.
When I am writing, more often than not, I go to the well inside me that is deepest; sadness. I think that it’s the most interesting place any creative person can go. Novelists have the luxury of being able to hide their experiences in their fiction. It’s sort of like being an actor, in that respect. We can also pick and choose what we later talk about as being true, and what say we have totally imagined for the good of the story. It’s a dance. The problem is that truth and vulnerability are, to me, inseparable. And whilst I am a very sincere person, I’m not always very good at being vulnerable.
Writing directly about my own life is new to me. I’m doing a lot more of that at the moment; I’m writing a lot of essays and pieces for press for the upcoming publication of Bitter Sweet, as well as for here. It feels vulnerable to do so. Much more vulnerable that writing fiction.
There is still a filter there, of course. Language is the filter, words alter the essence of what I am saying so I can be understood as I want to be. I think that the best novels are what Edna O’Brien called ‘the imaginative truth’; so written from a place of truth, but shaped into a more interesting story. But. It’s a slippery thing, the truth. And it exists in increments. In fiction, and non-fiction.
Ultimately, I ask myself the same question with everything I write: Do I want to share the most painful parts of my life through my work? The answer is yes, because that is what makes work good. But also, no, because I don’t want to be vulnerable in such an uncontrolled way, so open to interpretation and judgement. We are so dependent on the goodwill of the reader in how they interpret our work, how they interpret us. And we don’t always have that goodwill.
(Even writing this, I’m thinking; does this all read as very self-indulgent? Or, as an attempt to connect with you, the reader? You can read it as either. But my intention is genuine connection.)
So much of writing feels like a one-way conversation, essentially an over-caffeinated me just sitting (un-ergonomically) in bed or at my kitchen table with my laptop, eating apples, listening to Elliott Smith and screaming into a void. So hearing from people is always very welcome. I have had many, many messages from early Bitter Sweet readers (my publishers have sent hundreds of proof copies to reviewers, bloggers and influential readers over the last six months) saying that the book has reflected their own experiences back at them, and that this has been both comforting and painful. They have wept! They have been moved. No one has told me that they have had to put the book in the freezer yet, but I live in hope. If all this sounds like a humble brag, it’s because it is a humble brag, and unashamedly so. I want people to be moved. I even want them to cry. Crying is vulnerability. I love vulnerability in other people. I love it so much. And I love hearing from people who have read what I have written.
I think about the non-fiction that I most enjoy, (which is, at the moment, Joan Didion, Salman Rushdie and Clover Stroud) and how vulnerable and truthful their writing is. Vulnerability is the place to go to for anyone that wants to create good art. When we are vulnerable, we can be angry, or sad, or hopeful, or loving – a myriad of feelings can stem from vulnerability, which is just a state of being – it simply makes us more human. We can be seen more truthfully and we connect with each other much more meaningfully. And I want meaningful connections, not just personally, but with readers, with all humans. Every interview, every novel, every piece I write, every person I meet, I am looking for connection.
So why do I find vulnerability so hard? As I was reminded last week, it’s not just hard for me as a writer, but also as a consumer of art.
Last Friday I saw the extraordinary Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa The Poet perform at The Barbican in London. (He’s pretty magic, have a listen.) He was so vulnerable with the audience that I was brought (almost) to tears. It was the anniversary of the passing of someone I once cared about very much, and I felt so comforted by his words on grief, which is a central theme to all he writes. In the pitch-dark of that concert hall, it could have just been me and him. It felt like a conversation, a communion. Disarmed, I let myself be vulnerable and soft in reflection back. But then the lights came up and it was over, and I was stuck with a sickly feeling about the absolute vulnerability I had just felt. A ‘vulnerability hangover’, something I am very familiar with. It was so good to feel it in the moment. I want it, and I don’t. And doesn’t add up, and that cognitive dissonance is annoying to someone who spends far too much time alone being, well. Cognitive.
Some of my issues with vulnerability are tied-up in that I have experienced periods of time when I’m entirely unable to function in the world and I am, because of this, totally vulnerable. I have wanted to be as small and as invisible as possible, so small that I might actually disappear into the ether. In these times, I can’t pretend to be fine, I have no resources with which to hide any part of myself. It is ugly and exposing and messy. When I am better, I want to be seen as invincible so as to counter this, and show people I am completely fine, that I am back on their wavelength, ‘normal’ again.
There is less stigma than there was when it comes to understanding this kind of illness, but I have lived with it for a very long time, and so much shame is entangled with it that I can’t separate it out emotionally, even if I can cognitively. It’s only me that I keep this shame for. I would never tolerate anyone else who had experienced such a miserable illness feeling shame about it.
I feel the same dissonance when it comes to women’s bodies; I embrace the body-positivity movement but when it comes to my own physicality I expect thinness, perfection. I feel ashamed of the annoyingly bumpy and pasty and flat and round bits that I would celebrate in another woman’s body. I know that this opinion of myself is unhealthy and that my standards (I grew up in the 90’s) are totally unrealistic and un-progressive, yet the feeling sits in my chest, telling me to work out harder, and not to eat, starving me inside and out. I spend so much precious money on things to make my eyelashes thicker, my eye bags smoother, my neck more youthful, my hair softer, my pores smaller, my cheekbones more prominent. It is not vanity. It is armour against a feeling of insecurity, of vulnerability.
In seven short weeks I am going out into the world with my first novel, and I will face more exposure and feel more vulnerable than I maybe ever have. It is an absolute privilege, of course it is. But it comes at some cost, and brings some significant anxiety and discomfort. Bitter Sweet is a deeply personal novel, full of truth and fiction. Parts of it are totally imagined, but like all fiction, everything stems from the truth. It is a book very much about grief and the long-term effects of grief, especially when we lose a parent when we are young. It’s only now that I seem to be understanding how exposing this could feel.
If I have done a good job, then people will find it hard to separate the truth from the fiction. If I have done a really good job, people will think it is a memoir, because I have tried to write a book that feels as such. Some days, I feel enormous, and fearless. Other days I want to be as small as possible. To disappear completely.
I hope that people like what I write, and I hope that if they do, they will tell me, because every time it happens, I feel a little more comfortable with vulnerability, and a little more connected to the people and the world around me.
And sure, it’s hard, but more than that, it is beautiful.
If you liked this, then you might want to pre-order my debut novel Bitter Sweet which is out on July 3rd in the UK and Commonwealth/July 8th in the US. You can find out more about it and me HERE. Pre-ordering is the single biggest way you can support an author. I will be eternally grateful!
BIG FEELINGS/BIG RECOMMENDS
This week I have been having BIG FEELINGS watching the French film THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED, listening to Ethel Cain’s beautiful album PREACHER’S DAUGHTER, reading the new edition of the brilliant literary magazine EROTIC REVIEW which is full of truthful and vulnerable writing - I went to their Literary Salon in London last week, don’t miss the other events coming in London, Berlin and Brussels.