"I know how you feel"

Writing stories we've all lived before

If you read my last post, you explored how writers can work past writer’s block.

Since writing that post, another thought has stayed with me.

One reason I think we, as writers, develop writer's block is because we’re looking for something new to say.

Photo by Eberhard Grossgasteiger

Byron Katie writes, “I have discovered that in every language and in every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.”

Perhaps that’s why, when someone tells us a story, we so naturally want to say me too and then share our own story.

I know we’re not supposed to do that; I know we’re supposed to listen and validate, but it’s hard not to say, I know just how you feel.

It happened to me just the other day. Someone told me about a situation they were dealing with, and I replied, I know how you feel. I’ve been through this, too. Although I didn’t elaborate, I unintentionally made the conversation about me when what they needed was to be heard for their own experience. Of course, I didn’t mean to make the conversation about me; I meant to offer them support: you are not alone.

Isn’t that the truth, though? That we are all somehow going through the same thing? Perhaps the sequence of events is different, and the characters certainly are, too, but aren’t those universal feelings of brokenness something we all carry?

I know how you feel.

Me too.

Same.

As writers, we’re not here to invent something new; we’re here to breathe life into what already exists. We’re taking recycled experiences and putting a new filter on them. We’re shining a new light, a new perspective, on what already is. We’re reaching inside ourselves and offering something we hope the reader will recognize and say, me too. Because at the end of the day, though we long for connection and community, we go to bed alone with our thoughts. So to open a book and see ourselves reflected across the page, that is what makes us feel less alone.

Originality might be the goal, but it’s not the reason we write. We write in the hope that someone, somewhere, will say, same.

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