What do you always find yourself including in your writing?
Q&A With Shay Each Sunday
I recently attended the virtual lecture series put on by the Southampton Writers Conference. It was great to be a part of the community again, though it certainly felt a little lonelier and was missing the connectivity of being there in person. The Southampton Writers Conference was actually sort of my intro into the writing world when I attended my first workshop there about ten years ago. In one of the lecture series from this past conference, T Kira Madden gave a talk on honoring the process. She asked us to explore a lot of thought-provoking questions about our writing and why we write. These are great questions to be aware of in some way to have a better understanding of ourselves as writers. So, I will probably be implementing some of them into future blog posts, but I’ll start with the one that struck me most for this week. This is a few of her questions combined into one. She asked about what images, symbols, words, etc. we find ourselves returning to, and she also asked about our obsessions and if we write about those/in what ways.
Q: What do you always find yourself including in your writing?
A: One thing that I have realized recently about the settings I choose is that I always include the ocean or the water in my writing. It used to be pretty much all I wrote about when I was starting out. I shared a blog post on prompts a couple months ago that was inspired when thinking about the piece I wrote in grad school: The Blue World. Whenever I was given a prompt or thought about something I could write about the ocean would always pop into my head, and that’s where my characters would set themselves up. I don’t necessarily put as much emphasis on the ocean as I used to, because now that my craft has developed more and I think about my characters and plot in fuller ways it’s more like they’re there first and then choosing the setting. The ocean is very familiar and comforting to me, so naturally it would be a part of my characters’ lives, too. So, I do still use coastal towns/states as settings and I don’t know if that’ll ever stop. But, before the ocean might have been a crutch I used, whereas now it enhances my story. And this was comforting to realize because in T Kira Madden’s talk she spoke about leaning into our interests and the things we return to in our writing instead of trying not to write about them. So, I think I have almost subconsciously done that over the years as I have become a better writer—leaned into my love/obsession with the ocean and used it to develop the world more fully.
I have a few other elements/symbols/obsessions that I return to a lot. One of them also used to be a sort of crutch, because when you’re first starting out as a writer you don’t really know what you’re doing. So, you take these things that interest you and kind of dramatize them in a way that doesn’t necessarily make sense (at least I did). I used to write (well, maybe I still do) really dramatic and depressing stories and poems, all of which included a lot of blood. I do not know why blood recurred in my work (and still does to an extent—I mean, my collection of poetry is Bleeding Flowers, there’s a lot of blood in many of those poems. And the ocean!). I guess I didn’t realize that by using the image of blood I was constantly trying to explore pain. So, my metaphorical exploration of deep pain or sadness or emotions came out as a literal symbol. Mental health is a big part of my writing and my message now, which you will see in my debut YA novel Fractured. Even though I do still use the imagery of blood in some of my writing at times, it is usually talking about the pain beyond the blood, and I think that’s another “obsession” or recurring theme that I have honed without realizing what I was trying to say before. (I still don’t always know what I’m trying to say.) But when I thought about elements and symbols I returned to I didn’t really give this one much thought before now, and once again I’m glad to see the progression it has taken!
I also really love music, especially grunge. That was a pretty big part of my first book Crashing Waves (which I will be returning to at some point!), but I don’t really include music much in my writing anymore unless it’s going to be a big part of that character. Unfortunately, all my characters can’t love grunge, they have to be more dimensional and different from one another for that. I’ll typically mention a song or band during some scenes, but music is not as prevalent unless it needs to be. I try not to simply throw in things that I like because I like them, but rather have them mean something more.
I love animals but that’s never really part of my stories. I get upset when stories are too focused on animals even if it’s happy, which might seem weird, but I’m just too invested in animals to write anything about them in a full and accurate way. So I try to steer clear of that. I guess there are also obsessions that we need to recognize don’t belong in our writing.
I’m a coffee addict. My characters usually drink coffee, but it’s not a big part of the stories. Maybe one day I’ll write a whole coffee-themed story! That would be kind of fun. As usual, I’m not going to write that idea down, though, so we’ll see if I remember.
In terms of messages I find myself returning to, I like to write about characters who feel like they don’t fit in, because I relate to that quite a bit. I’d like to write a really shy character one day, but it’s so difficult to pull off well. I did this to an extent in Fractured, but she was initially much more reserved than the final product because it just wasn’t working to have her be more closed off, which is essentially what being shy is—to those around us who don’t understand, anyway. If I ever do write a character who is really shy I’d have to make them the narrator. It’s a future possibility. But, mental health in general—anxiety, depression, and so on are topics I like to explore. They just have to be framed in different situations and scenarios so as not to feel repetitive.
…Which will be the point I close on. I think T Kira Madden is totally right in suggesting that writers lean into their obsessions and elements and symbols they find themselves returning to, but then the challenge becomes doing this in a way that doesn’t feel repetitive. There are always answers we’re chasing and things we’re fascinated with. And, actually, there aren’t really any new original ideas, we’re simply recycling and presenting the same ideas, but in fresh ways, over and over. Cultivate your obsessions and interests and come at them from new angles all the time!
What do you always find yourself returning to or including in your writing?
