In a new post, C.S. Lakin offers advice for writing about difficult emotional experiences, either in memoirs or fictionalized in your novel. “While no one holds a gun to our heads (one hopes!) to force us into writing about painful things, sometimes our souls subtly prompt us in order for healing to take place,” she says.
Lakin wrote about such experiences in her novel, Conundrum. “I felt a strong compulsion and need to write the novel, even though I didn’t want to,” she says. The background of the novel was the death of Lakin’s father in 1961. “Usually I have no problem plowing through my index cards of scenes, progressing steadily to the finish,” she says. “But this work was an unruly child, full of deceit and intent on pain.”
Even going slowly, the book was difficult to write, but Lakin sought to explore both the mystery and heartbreak of her father’s death, as well as grace and redemption. “I turned this personal history into a mystery that has no clear answers, because real life is usually like that,” she says. “Everyone in this book either lies or has been lied to. And although my protagonist wants to save her suicidal brother with truth from their past, she finds she can only save herself, and by the skin of her teeth.”
The story blurred as Lakin weaved fact and fiction into her novel. “I doubt I will ever know the truth in this life,” she writes. “Perhaps, though, my novel will help others who have been betrayed by their family, reveal something about bipolar depression, and bring something redemptive out the ashes of my own pain. My hope is that all writers experience such growth and insight as they tell their stories.”
