Why to Keep Writing

How abuse triggers writers' emotions—and 9 reasons to stay the course for the next four years

By January 2017, I’d been teaching “Write Your Memoir in Six Months” with Linda Joy Myers for five years. It was to be our eleventh go-round, but we didn’t account for the despondency and despair of the first cohort of memoirists to write with us under a Trump presidency.

We can but let’s not debate the role of the economy, or the liability of gender and race, in what happened this week. Instead, let’s look at the emotional state of half the nation, and consider how different people respond to abuse.

Abuse lives inside bodies, so if you’re a survivor, or a witness, it’s there, even if you tamp it down, or go days or years without feeling the force of its impacts. People create lives to manage the effects of past abuse, particularly by surrounding themselves with supportive people, by knowing that they’re safe. So, to be forced to be in the company of an abuser (especially on the world stage) is to witness your emotions catch fire. To be forced to witness the vitriol, the crudeness, the dehumanization and denigration of others and to see it all accepted, normalized, condoned—yes, this opens wounds.

In my writing community, I’ve seen people respond to their emotions catching fire in one of three ways:

• For some, it stokes anger. If you feel angry, let that anger galvanize your writing. I’ve always been a proponent of negative emotion as a driver for creativity because it works.

• For others, fear is the body’s first response. If you feel fear, take your time. You may experience moments of regression. You may worry that they’re going to get you. You may fear retribution for what you say or what you write. Don’t let anyone tell you not to be afraid, but don’t go underground. Tend to your writing, even if you don’t make it public for a while. Tend to your community. We survive this together.

• Finally, there’s apathy, which is a survival response. If you don’t want to feel, or if the feelings are too big, you may find yourself here. Be kind to yourself, but please don’t turn over your power to the abuser and the impacts of that abuse. Find ways to engage. If you feel fear, write into it. If you feel anger, write about it. If you feel anything, let the emotion in.

I can’t save any writers from the impacts of next four years, but I can share what I learned from the first time around and 9 good reasons to keep writing:

• Writing is your birthright, and no one can take that away from you
• Your writing is your testimony
• The story you have to tell is yours, not anyone else’s, and you are not alone
• You are a voice of resistance
• Your words will always remind you of your power
• Writing is a form of activism
• You are stronger and braver than you think you are
• The next generation needs us
• The only way out is through

If you have words of wisdom for how you got through the first time, or for how you plan to get through this time, please, please share. We are not victims, we are warriors and warrioresses, and not only is the pen is mightier than the sword, the pen will be our salvation and our way through these dark times.