IT’S ALL MATERIAL

My jaw is clenched. When I awoke at three o’clock this morning, my teeth and gums throbbed. My shoulders are sore from tensing them. There’s a place in my chest that’s heavy as lead.

We feel emotions in our bodies.

I said this countless times to my psychotherapy clients. “Pay attention to where you feel your anger and your fear. In your stomach? Your chest? Your throat? If you feel it, you can pay attention to it. If you pay attention to it, you can manage it.”

An early writing teacher said it countless times to me. “Use body parts. Show emotions in your characters by naming where in their bodies they feel them. Feelings don’t free-float in the atmosphere. Ground them.”

I’ve been paying attention to my emotions allright. During the last six months, between bouts of anxiety and depression, as I watch every freedom I believe in threatened or destroyed, I’ve entered brief states of apocalyptic terror. A Pollyanna I’m not.

I do, however, love finding gold in the rubble.

And I find it–threads of gold in my rubble–when I feel fear or rage or hurt or tenderness or longing or delight, when I notice where I feel them and connect that feeling with one of my fictional characters. I feel rage pulsate in my forehead, fear draw my midsection into a tight ball, hurt like a stick jabbing my chest and then an ache when the jab stops. And then I know I’m not exaggerating when I use those terms to describe Lissa, my novel’s protagonist, when she’s threatened by a woman determined to destroy her reputation and well-being. I know I’m not inventing what she feels in order to create some drama. The high point of three months of trauma last year, when I was threatened by an unscrupulous tenant, was a phone interchange where I felt my body tingle with fear and then go numb. So that’s the start of a dissociative state, I thought. I can write that.

Using personal experience is a staple in non-fiction and fiction writing. “It’s all material” is a phrase most writers have heard and honor. It’s taken on new meaning for me though, since, before last year, I was mostly breezing along without the angst that now hunkers down inside me. (Angst like a sick bird in my protagonist’s chest, trying to flap a broken wing.)

My protagonist’s heart feels bruised. Her chin cleft feels raw from digging her fingertip into it. Her eyes feel swollen and dry. I feel confident she’d really feel that way.

“Take your broken heart and turn it into art,” Meryl Streep said, at the Golden Globe Awards ceremony.

Take your broken heart and turn it into art.

I shall.

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