This wasn’t the plan…
3 chapters…
01.
I didn’t set out to write teen fiction. I set out to write fiction, sure, but my devious plan or my motivating, underlying drive or my curious desire was to explore healing through storytelling. I’ve been a psychologist my entire career, as well as a writer, and over the years, I’ve developed a specific interest in healing and transformation as opposed to just managing and coping. Too many approaches seem to be about managing and coping. Too few approaches are about true transformational healing. Also, I’ve done a lot of explicit teaching in my career and this time I didn’t want to teach. I wanted story to lead the conversation and not the other way around. Healing and storytelling, great, sure, okay, not a bad combo. But how?
02.
Plan A. You may be unsurprised to discover that at this point a few of my thinking/strategising/business-minded parts banded together to come up with a plan. We know, Jodie! You should write a series of books where the main character is a therapist. You can explore what’s coming up in her clients and her colleagues and herself. It will be great, awesome, truly amazing! Series are good because if a reader likes one book, they’ll keep reading the next titles. All good! It ticks off the healing and storytelling and it makes good business sense. I sat with that idea for, I don’t know, a week or two. It was a relatively decent idea from a business sense but there was one major problem with it. It wasn’t exciting me. It wasn’t enticing me. I wasn’t igniting me.
03.
Plan B. It wasn’t a plan at all. It was, in fact, an anti-plan. I asked my thinking/strategising/business-minded parts to step back and give me some space. And then I sat in that spaciousness, in the void, in the unknown, in the in-between and I waited. I didn’t try and force an idea to come forward. I didn’t go looking for an idea. I didn’t mind-map or brainstorm. I just waited. Until, bing! An idea emerged that excited me, enticed me and ignited me. About a teen. Having some family issues. Having some understanding herself issues. And having some falling in love issues. Oooh. That piqued my interest. I sat with the idea some more and my interest expanded rather than dulled so I knew I had to explore more. That’s when I began the pre-writing and then the writing and then the editing and then the publishing. And that’s how I came to write teen fiction. Totally unplanned.
3 endnotes…
To be honest, I’m still a little surprised, confused, not totally sure what the bigger purpose is about writing teen fiction. I feel like there is a bigger purpose. I understand from a psychology perspective that our teen years can be fraught but also energetically electric. And so important. But I’m not quite sure about the bigger what/why/how. Not surprisingly, my thinking/strategising/business-minded parts want to work it out for me. But, of course, what I need to do is go back to the void, create the space and see what emerges.
Teen drama? Yep! It’s Season 2 of Heartbreak High on Netflix. I loved the first season and I’ve just started watching the second season. Diversity, yes. Social issues, OMG, yes. Drama-rama, absolutely. But also characters you care about. That makes for the best drama.
FIZZ are four talented-musician friends who paused their individually successful solo careers to write and sing together because, and I quote “ we wanted to go back to being 12-year-olds in the garage, hashing it out and having a laugh.” With songs like The Secret to Life, High in Brighton and Hell of a Ride, that youthful energy is palpable. And so much fun! They released an album last year but they’ve also recently released a few acoustic versions of their songs, which you can find wherever you stream your music. See that youthful spirit is so freaking creative and energising!
Thank you for being here! Love to you and yours,