Writing in the Middle of the Story

“You don’t know what the story is about when you’re in the middle of it. You think you do, but you don’t. You make up all kinds of possible story lines: this is about growing up. Or this is about living without fear. You can guess all you want, but you don’t know. All you can do is keep walking.”

-Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet

I remember the day I met Shauna Niequist.

At the 2016 Festival of Faith and Writing, there were dozens of brilliant writers, all of whom gave exquisite talks about the writer's life. Even so, Shauna stuck out.

When she took the stage, dressed in a deep blue tunic and patterned shrug, she wrapped all of us up in her presence. Playful and candid, she spoke about her craft with such transparency. And she offered some of the most important writing advice of my entire career: written stories must be worked through.

The story you write first–the one with hot, raw emotion–is not the story you publish. 

As a woman trying to write my way out of the loss of a broken engagement, that revelation was crucial to my creative process. 

Great writing is not merely expression. It is expression, followed by witness, tending to, release, and then, finally, refinement. 

To this day, I revisit the recording of Shauna’s talk, and I have a folder of “letters'' secreted away in my personal Google drive. Letters are often how I give words to my most difficult stories the first time. Sometimes, I’ve directed my pain in those letters to the person who caused the harm, but more often I’ve written to the God who allowed the harm to happen.

And the letters? They’re not great. Some of them could heat the very core of my laptop with white-hot rage. Or dim the screen with the darkest cloud of hopelessness. None of that writing is made for readers. It’s made for me and the Spirit of God. That writing bears witness to the depth of pain my heart has felt. It whispers, “Yes, the pain is real. And it is remembered.” 

And that writing matters. It may not be great writing, but my greatest writing cannot happen apart from the raw writing of those letters.

In Shauna’s words,

“You get all the details down, you capture your experience as vividly and in as much detail as you can, but you don't try to decide what it is. You don't try to decide what it means, how it fits in the larger narrative of your life or your project, you just get it down and leave it. And then between six weeks and six months later, you'll know what it means in the greater narrative, and then at that point, you start asking questions about, is this my story to tell? How many of these details are pertinent or helpful? And, so I tell stories all different ways.”

I’ll be honest, processing the emotion of my early writing tends to take longer than 6 months. Nevertheless, the heart of Shauna’s words have served as a beacon in my creative process. Sometimes, I’m writing for my craft, fervently hoping that one day my words will find a home and bring healing to my own set of readers.

But other times I am still writing for my own healing, and I can’t rush that process.

Standing that day in a long line of fans after Shauna finished her talk, I wondered what I was going to say to her. I was grasping Bittersweet, one of her older books, in my hand, and I wanted to be sure she heard how hopeful it felt to me to read her reflections on bitter turns in her story and learning to dream again.

Instead, when I came face-to-face with her, big alligator tears began swimming in my eyes and a very incoherent strand of words about her story and my story tumbled out between us. I felt overcome and embarrassed, until Shauna simply wrapped me in a hug and whispered “thank you” in my ear, as if I was the one who had brought the gift. 

You may be thriving with your creativity right now, making art for an audience and feeling a sense of power in your world. Or, you may be creating to name and feel a wound. Whichever it is, I’d love to wrap you in a Shauna Niequist-like hug and say “thank you.” 

Thank you for showing up in your life.

Thank you for noticing your heart and marking what it has felt.

Thank you for wherever you are in your creative process.

Thank you for how the world will be better because you are taking the time to create today.

Wherever you are in the journey, it matters.

I hope as creatives, we will continually remind each other of this truth, and support one another when the time finally comes to share that processed writing. To that end, Shauna Niequist has a book coming out in a month about a difficult season in her own life. I have already pre-ordered my copy. Trust me, you will want to do the same.