“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Ann Lamott
This is a rather famous quote now, given by Ann Lamott in a TED talk back in 2017 with a cheeky gleam in her eye. When I first encountered Ms. Lamott delivering this speech, I delighted in her delight, and gleefully attached myself to the thought of naming names and scorching earths against all who had wronged me. Sure, I write fiction, but I could easily weave in the wrongs done to me into my stories and make sure they were illuminated enough that those who had wronged me would know I was exposing them. How freeing. How healing. How vengefully cathartic. Except it doesn’t really work that way, or at least it shouldn’t.
For one, as a fiction writer, I am compelled by the characters who I create to travel the roads they bring me down. If I force them down a road of my own independent creation, then it reads as forced, and inauthentic, and no one will care about the narrative I am creating. I never know when a character first introduces themselves to me where we will end up, and if I have an ending in mind before we begin our journey, my story will fall flat and peter out into nothingness. A strict outline of “horrible guy does this and then vengeance is set upon them” stifles any of the beautiful, creative unseen plot twists that are born when I am free writing early drafts with no expectations of plot events.
The power for me then lies in the first sentence from Ms. Lamott, not the last. I own everything that has happened to me; it all flows through me and makes me who I am. If I let go of seeking vengeance with my keyboard, the evil I have encountered will naturally slink into my writing and I will creatively find a way to thwart it. It’s not that there is no vengeance, it’s just that I don’t get to stridently plot it. It’s more fun that way I assure you.