Without a story to write I’m in limbo. But I have to wait a while before starting a new one else I’d never be long enough in my real life and that would be selfish to others. The Nurse’s Secret is now out of my hands and will soon be book five. It still doesn’t feel quite real to me to have books published. Maybe if I get to ten books I might start to believe I’m a writer.
Thinking back to my education at school, I spent my lessons with my head buried in books. Not in biology or maths or English grammar books but in the books hidden beneath my desk on my lap. My friends would elbow me occasionally to alert me to a teacher heading my way. The book would then disappear beneath my skirt. While my friends focused on their education, I spent my days engrossed in love stories feeling the thrill of the two main characters overcoming hurdles, created by others set to ruin them. Until in the end the truth comes out giving a happy ending.
So why not write love stories today? I couldn’t get enough of them when I was a teenager. Maybe it was because I was at a convent with no boys to make school more interesting. I was clearly addicted, but I never wrote one of my own. I couldn’t imagine it would be interesting. I would have to write and create at the same time. I couldn’t just dive in and turn pages. And my handwriting would never be able to keep up with my thoughts.
I stopped reading love stories when I started nursing and switched to detective stories. I sought a different kind of thrill – for the perpetrator to be caught, for justice is done. I wrote my first story in longhand twenty years after I became a nurse. I filled writing pad after writing pad, often squeezing my hand to keep me writing for longer. My heart would beat fast at images created in my head. My mouth would dry, and sometimes I would cry. Writing wasn’t interesting. It was disturbing – a kind of torture – that wouldn’t stop until I reached the end. Distancing myself wasn’t an option until I found a resolution for these characters I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I knew their story, it was a film inside my head, but how to tell it on paper was the hardest thing. I could feel what they felt but finding the right words. Many of my first attempts went in the bin.
I had no experience of writing. Apart from holding a pen. Learning to type initially felt slower. I was sure a pen could write faster until one day I realised I could type faster than write, and even then I couldn’t type as fast as I thought a sentence. And I had a whole story in my head that I had to hold in there until I could put it on paper. In recent years I learnt a strategy that is kinder on my brain, and probably on my eyes and hands as well. It was something I never tried before. Instead of keeping the whole story in my head how I used to until every word was written, I now write a storyboard of what will happen. So I no longer panic I will forget anything.
When I begin a new story I know it’s going to be months of reaching inside my imagination to feel emotions that my characters will experience. I feel trepidation as my mind will not rest until I have finished the story. Some might call it escapism. But I don’t think for me that it is. Escapism for me is a return of routine activities like washing clothes, walking around shops, talking on the phone, a laptop closed. Escapism should be a place where the mind can rest. And I ask myself why I do it. Why write about cruel things that happen in real life and mix it up in fiction? I think I know the answer. I think it’s a form of healing.
I became a nurse because I wanted to make people better. I imagined it would be a job where if you worked hard your patient would get well and go home. Empathy was all that was required to do the job. But I never imagined tackling reality head-on. The depth of feeling it requires of looking into a patient’s face and seeing the intense pain or raw fear of dying. You learn to deal with it if you want to help. The closer you get the more accurate you become in recognising a person’s needs. You take away as much as you can of their pain and fear as possible and store it as a way to learn from it how to help the next one.
I learnt a word a few years ago. Empath. My daughter was speaking about Empaths in her job in safeguarding children, and I was surprised I’d never heard it before. It describes a person who is extra-sensitive to the feelings and emotions of those around them. It was a lightbulb moment for me. I became a nurse because this was me. I’m an empath. It doesn’t necessarily make for a better nurse. To be effective you need a filter to push back the feelings of others. Otherwise where do they go?
For me the answer was to write. At the time not even really knowing why. Perhaps to understand the reality of life. Addressing the darkness through harrowing plots to have a full stop at the end to say that it’s over. That in a sense is healing that no one has really suffered, no one has really died. It’s just the conflicts in my mind telling a story.
Liz Lawler grew up sharing pants, socks, occasionally a toothbrush, sleeping four to a bed. Born in Chatham and partly raised in Dublin, she is one of fourteen children. She spent over twenty years as a nurse and has since fitted in working as a flight attendant, a general manager of a five star hotel, and is now working with trains. She became an author in 2017 when her debut novel Don’t Wake Up was published by Twenty7.
