WRITING FOR YOURSELF FIRST, a guest post by author M. K. Lobb

Now, stay with me—I know the title isn’t very exciting. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard, “write the book you want to read!” at least a hundred times. And while I thoroughly agree with that advice, it’s a little more complicated than that.

I was a wildly anxious, oversensitive child. School trips were my nightmare. Sleepovers were out of the question. My parents had to bribe me to attend school dances. I hated birthday parties, places with too many people, and anything loud. I had a few friends, but other kids weren’t exactly nice to me. I was known for being weird. Quiet, but aggressive. Too reactive. I was diagnosed fairly young with auditory processing disorder, and had to sit close to the teacher’s desk. I would be diagnosed with ADHD years later, and things would make more sense, but until then, I would struggle. Not in academics, but just… generally.

When I went off to high school, I decided to change. I would no longer be sensitive—in fact, I wouldn’t care about anything. Nobody would dare be mean to me. I was going to overhaul my entire personality. Sounds like any thirteen-year-old starting high school, right?

Except that I actually did this. And it actually stuck.

I watched how other people behaved and tried to channel that. When I needed to be confident, I pretended I was an actor playing a role. Every so often I stopped to wonder if I was certifiably insane for doing so. But it didn’t matter, because I was no longer small and scared and strange. I remember sitting in the lunch room for grade nine orientation, turning to the girl sitting beside me, and deciding, “this is when it starts.”

If you’re neurotypical, you might be reading this with a WTF expression on your face. But if you’re not, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. The problem was that I got too good at pretending not to care. I’ll never forget one of my first crushes telling me I was more of a= robot than a person. I started to wonder, Oh god, am I doing this wrong?

I spiralled. At the same time, I was going through an entirely separate shift: my years as a praise service pianist in various churches were rapidly turning me from “indifferent” to “full of rage.” I know that can be a sensitive subject, so I won’t go into the specifics. Some of you, though, will know what I mean when I say there’s a certain moment where everything changes. When your whole worldview turns on its head, and you have this hit-by-a-train moment of, “What even is this?” For most people, you can’t go back to how you were prior to that moment. You can come to terms with it, which I like to think is what I’ve done now, but this is about teen me. In short, my life felt chaotic. I was full of a dozen kinds of anger and misery I couldn’t even put words to. 

When I went off to university, I started writing books.

They weren’t good, but it didn’t matter. When I had a bad day, I yearned to get home and write. When I felt crushed by misery, or full of anger, I found a character to give it to. I worked through my emotions on the page. I found a way to describe them using prose when I couldn’t figure out how to do it aloud. I really do think it saved me—I remembered how to care again, even if it hurt. I had a new focus.

Years later, after deciding I wanted to publish one of those books and receiving countless rejections, I wrote Seven Faceless Saints.

Yes, it was a book I would have wanted to read—I filled it with the elements I, personally, love about YA fantasy—but most of all, it was a book of all the things that plagued me as a teen. It had a too-sensitive boy struggling to believe what he’s told he should. It had a girl who was too reactive, too blunt, and too angry, fighting against a world that doesn’t make sense to her. It didn’t “both sides” the fantasy world’s belief system, because it wasn’t a commentary—it was catharsis. I knew even as I wrote it that it wasn’t going to appeal to everyone, but I also knew I couldn’t let that bother me. Seven Faceless Saints is a book of fantasy, romance, and mystery, but it’s also a book of feelings expelled after far too many years, given to characters who are better because of them. The too-sensitive boy learns that the people who matter respect him for caring as much as he does. The too-angry girl uses her rage to drive her, and in turn drives change. They’re messy, and definitely imperfect, but so am I.

I suppose when I say write for yourself first, I’m not trying to be prescriptive. I’m simply trying to say that as emotional as releasing a book may be, it’s easier to weather when you know the book has already helped one person—you.

Meet the Author

Bio: M. K. Lobb is a fantasy writer with a love of all things dark— be it literature, humour, or general aesthetic. She grew up in small-town Ontario and studied political science at both the University of Western Ontario and the University of Ottawa. She now lives by the lake with her partner and their cats. When not reading or writing, she can be found at the gym or contemplating the harsh realities of existence. Find her on social media as @mk_lobb.

Filed under: Guest Post