Today, December 21, is the Winter Solstice, marking the shortest day of the year, after which the days gradually begin to get longer again. As the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky, our planet Earth invites us inward. Hence, it I said that the Winter Solstice teaches us to embrace patience, renewal, and trust in cycles unseen. It also symbolizes the return of the light after this longest night.
A time for introspection, of letting go of the old and welcoming back longer days and thus sunnier times. It is this that I found symmetrical with the catharsis of writing my Other Worldly novel series, especially after recently reading “Writing Healing Fiction,” by author Liz Parker in Writer’s Digest online.
Parker first explained how the impetus for writing healing fiction stemmed from her complex PTSD due to an emotionally abusive mother in childhood. She particularly captured my attention with, “To explore a different outcome, the possibility of hope…that examination of an alternative future is the essence of healing fiction.”
Hence, what I had thought was merely cathartic was actually “healing fiction,” because I set out to explore different outcomes in this chaotic world by using extraterrestrial aliens in my OW novels to offer hope for the future of humanity and Planet Earth. As well as healthy, nurturing relationships for my protagonist Rowan Layne, such that she might heal from an abusive male. A form of embracing a return to the light and trust in cycles unseen, per the Winter Solstice.
Parker’s article also made me cognizant that my avoidance of dissecting details of relationship trauma was not necessarily a bad thing. “I don’t write the trauma,” she explained, “I write the healing from trauma.” And I realized that, ultimately, this is precisely what my writing has been about since I began drafting Alienable Rights back in 2017. The process of healing, not only from abusive relationships, but from shared national trauma.
“What exactly is healing fiction?” Parker asked. “It’s the stories we write to heal ourselves and the stories we hope will heal others,” she said. “It’s not so much mining of trauma as it is an alchemizing of our darkest memories and deepest pains into something new, something universal that allows readers to see themselves as someone they love on the page in a new way.”
Powerful stuff. Emerging triumphant from the darkest of times into a new world of light and laughter and hope. The very theme explored in my latest work in progress, Alien Origins, a culmination of the OW series.
“People tell you to write what you know,” said Parker, explaining how trauma and the path to healing are subjects she knows deeply. Writing is a part of that journey for her, but she doesn’t write to escape or to cope with aftereffects of childhood trauma. Instead she said she faces the pain head on to achieve real change not just for herself, but for her readers.
Parker concluded, “I realized that if I wanted my writing to mean something, to do something, it had to make my readers feel something, and I couldn’t do that without feeling something myself.”
As Rowan Layne would say, boy howdy. And as an author, it is gratifying to know that escapist writing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, despite those readers who claim they don’t want to be informed by novels, they just want a diversion.
After all, stark reality and those darkest hours will still occur no matter what the season’s change, and no matter what we read or what we write. We all need to eventually come into the light, and perhaps a little literary nudge to do so can be healing and helpful.
Happy Winter Solstice everyone. Let’s embrace the light when and wherever we can.