Making the Invisible Visible

I am still working on my Nano story, though I am woefully far behind on my word count. On the other hand, I've managed to write at least a little bit every single day, and I do feel like I'm getting somewhere, and that helps. But that's not what I want to write about today.

For the last couple of months, I've been dealing with chronic pain in my hip, and in the last month, I've been walking with a cane. I've had some form of chronic illness for years, but they generally fall into the realm of "invisible" ailments. Walking with the cane has made the invisible visible for the first time, and that has been an eye-opening experience.

I'm in my thirties, and tend to look a bit younger, so I get a fair number of double-takes when people see a "young" woman walking with a cane. I have noticed that people are more likely to get out of my way, or apologize if they move in front of me. I need more room and more time to move around, and that means that I'm taking up more space and time than I normally do. In general, I do my best not to take up too much room, so it's been very hard for me to get accustomed to not being able to just slide through without drawing attention to myself.

Beyond just being noticed more often myself, I've become more aware of the things that I hadn't noticed before. Stairs, for example - I've always had an issue with stairs (my earliest memory is of falling down two flights of stairs when I was about 4, so stairs have always been the enemy in my mind), but I never realized just how many of them there are. In particular, last night there was a social event for work at the EMP, and the elevators were down. There was next to no location in the building I could go to without having to go up or down stairs, and it was incredibly stressful on my hip. It doesn't help that I kept having people who I know reasonably well staring at me as I stump my way around the place.

My department has been having a summit all week, which basically means everyone comes to Seattle so we can all sit in a meeting room all day, and then have some kind of social event in the evening. Having everyone from the department in one place has shown me something I wasn't expecting - as far as I could tell, I was the only person who had some sort of visible mobility issue.

I'm fortunate, in a lot of ways - everyone has been wonderful, and I've been able to get around most obstacles without much trouble. I also get the impression that when the people that organized the summit saw me, they suddenly realized that not everything was as accessible as they had thought. It's been an eye-opening experience, and one I will want to remember when my hip is finally better. At the same time, it's not something I want to keep experiencing for very long, if I can help it.

Writing through pain

This is a difficult thing for me to write, but I think putting it down on virtual paper will help.  There are loads of blogs and books and magazine articles out there that give writing advice, and the main point comes down to one thing - as Chuck Wendig so eloquently put it, shut up and write.

It's not bad advice - a writer writes, after all, and nothing gets written if someone doesn't sit down (or lie down, or stand up - however you feel comfortable) and write it.  I understand it completely, and it's certainly something I've tried to cleave to since I've decided that being a writer was more important to me than whining about wanting to be a writer.  However, that doesn't mean I write every day, and I know there are a lot of people in a similar situation to mine.

In order to write, you have to be able to hold a pen or pencil, or type, or dictate, or in some other way cause words to bleed onto a page (whether digital or physical).  The act of bleeding words on the page may involve sitting or standing in one place for extended periods of time.  It means putting yourself in the minds of characters you've made up, and deciding how they're going to react to the situations you create for them.  It all sounds reasonably easy, doesn't it?  On good days, it is.

Then there are the bad days.  The days when the pain is so bad that the idea of moving to a desk or lifting your hand to hold a pen or reaching for a laptop can leave you in tears.  The days when the depression lies and tells you that everything you write is terrible and no one will ever want to read it, so why are you bothering to write it down?  The days when the anxiety is so high that your hands shake at the thought of someone - anyone - ever reading what you're writing, and you second-guess every letter and word, certain that someone else has done it better and that people will tear it - and by extension, you - apart, if ever they were to read it.  And of course, there are the days that combine any of the above, or add in the exhaustion that can tag along with the pain or the depression, leaving you with absolutely no energy to move, much less create a world and characters out of thin air.

Sometimes, forcing yourself to write can help push the demons back into the darkness.  The words can be like a lion tamer's chair, forcing the lion back and keeping you safe.  The words may not be great, but they help you focus on something other than the pain, either physical or mental.  Distracting yourself won't work forever, but it can keep you moving for another few steps, and that might be just what you need right now.

Sometimes, no matter how much you want to write, and how much you want to fight and win, you'll lose the battle to the pain.  The physical or emotional pain will be too much, and you won't be able to write.  That doesn't mean you're not a writer.  You can still create worlds and people in your mind, and when you're able to, you can memorialize those worlds and people on paper of some sort.  The fact that you can't do that today doesn't mean you aren't allowed in the super-secret Writers' Club.

"Shut up and write" is solid, if harsh, advice.  First and foremost, though, you need to take care of yourself.  You can't write if you don't.

Progress - wrote about three days of the last seven, mostly in preparation of Nanowrimo.  Still trying to figure out what story I'm telling, but I'm getting there.

Character building - pain

Something that every person has to deal with at some point is pain.  Be it physical or purely emotional, how a person handles pain says a lot about that person, and people can learn a lot about themselves when they have to encounter pain of some sort.

I find that figuring out how a character reacts to pain is a great way to flesh out a character.  It's usually just a thought experiment, though occasionally I'll write a brief scene to help me solidify the things I learn about that character.  For example, I'll put the character in a situation that would cause the "average person" some sort of emotional pain - the death of a family member.  Finding out how the character reacts to that brings up a ton of questions right away:

• How close is the character to the family member in question?
• How does the character react externally, in public?
• How does the character react privately?
• Is there anyone that the character would feel comfortable expressing their pain to?
• What's the first thought that runs through the character's head when hearing the news?

There are stories that can grow out of this information right away - if the character isn't close to the family member who died, why?  Was there some sort of estrangement?  If the character breaks down in public, how do the people around the character react?

Physical pain is less similar that it would seem on first blush.  Speaking from personal experience with chronic pain, I know that I can "push through" pain I'm used to, but will be laid out flat by something unexpected.  I have chronic head pain, so I'm used to working around headaches; however, if I throw my back out, the slightest shift in movement will leave me incapacitated.  So ask yourself: 

• What kinds of pain your character can work through, and what will drop them into the fetal position?
• Does your character react differently if someone witnesses an injury, as opposed to being alone?
• At what point will your character ask for help?

In general, people don't like to think about pain.  However, seeing how someone reacts to different kinds of pain can help give a character depth, even if it never comes up explicitly in the text.  Try not to torture them too much, though - you don't want them to run off screaming into the night.