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You’re right, you need emotions when writing. The only way to summon up emotions for your characters is to feel them yourself, at least to some extent. Raw emotions make writing stronger.
ReplyThis was an amazing post. I need to do more of this. Thank you.
ReplyI came back from Vietnam in 1966 with a severe case of combat induced PTSD, and I locked all those gut reactions of what I had lived through over there in my head inside of a locked vault.
Years later, my parents mentioned that I never talked about what happened over there after I came home, and they talked about it and decided not to ask questions.
The PTSD led to heavy drinking and only through the booze did I gut myself over and over, suicidal because if I had not forced myself to stop drinking and eat healthier in 1982, I’d be dead now.
I had to choose, and I voted for life through drastic lifestyle changes.
But it still took 47 years before I started to talk about what was behind that gut reactions caused by the PTSD, and talking about it in a room with other vets from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, who were also learning to survive and manage the pain, was an awakening. When you are sitting next to a special forces medic thirty years younger than you who has 100% PTSD because of his multiple deployments to Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, putting your gut reactions into perspective takes on a totally different meaning.
I just finished the rough draft of my next novel and when I start the revisions in a few weeks, after giving it a rest, I’m going to make sure the main character cuts into his/her shape-shifting guts with an edged weapon sharper than a razor. I have a few of those around the house.
ReplyLloyd, first and foremost, thank you for your service. Secondly, I’m glad you’re surrounded by the unfortunate company of others with combat induced PTSD. I say unfortunate because I wish war wasn’t necessary and our men and women in the armed forces didn’t have to live that reality. Do you feel veterans today have a better support system in place when coming back from deployments?
I’m honored this guest post helped you see the need to dig deeper for your writing. However, a word of caution: digging and dredging up of these long held back feelings can at first be cathartic and later be tourture (when you have to go back and reread, relive it all through the editing phase…) Be sure to go in knowing this and take care of yourself. I wrote more about writing in true life events here: http://www.liamack.com/blog
Wish you had had a better support network back in ’66. Thankful you’ve found one now.
Good luck in your writing!
~ Lia
ReplyHere’s a better link: http://www.liamack.com/2015/03/to-write-a-novel-based-on-true-life-events-or-not-that-is-a-good-question.html
ReplyDo you feel veterans today have a better support system in place when coming back from deployments?
Yes.
The reason I say yes is because many Vietnam Vets—some are members of Congress like McCain—spent decades fighting for that support and now it is serving the vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. It isn’t perfect and there is room for improvement, but it’s a lot better than what existed after the Vietnam War when there was little to no support. For instance, I didn’t know the support was there until I retired from teaching in 2005 and ended up talking to a Navy vet by accident who told me. The VA system currently cares for about 7 million vets but more than 20 million are eligible.
What’s interesting is that VA’s therapy for PTSD has evolved to the point over the last few decades, starting mostly with Clinton’s second term as president when he pushed legislation to improve and expand services to vets through the VA, that VA mental health care work hard to get the vets to relive the most traumatic events repeatedly no matter how painful. Through this, the vets are taught to recognize the PTSD triggers and how to manage them. It’s not easy.
The VA medical center near Stanford University works with the university and its students to evolve the therapy for vets. Our daughter, who graduated from Stanford in June of 2014, was part of that program and worked with vets out of the Palo Alto VA clinic near Stanford. The vet she worked with the most had lost his legs or arms (I don’t remember which) in combat in Iraq from an IED and the vet also had brain trauma from the blast. The Palo Alto VA center also studies the effect of pets on PTSD by assignment trained animals to become part of vets lives to help them deal with the trauma.
The special forces vet I mentioned has a service dog he’s brought with him to the group we belong to. A large, menacing looking dog who is gentle as a lamb and keeps its large eyes on his vet to make sure to act if the vet’s PTSD is triggered. This very large dog will then gently stand up and put a huge paw on the vets knee to get his attention to defuse the PTSD event.
ReplyYou might enjoy this post that I wrote and published on one of my blogs June 12, 2012
Furry Friendly Therapy for PTSD
http://thesoulfulveteran.com/2012/06/12/furry-friendly-therapy-for-ptsd/
ReplyYes, and Hemingway never considered himself a great writer, but a damn good rewriter.
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