CREATIVITY | WRITING

How the Most Traumatizing Story I Wrote Improved My Writing Voice

Emotions = Authenticity = Your Unique Voice

Everything within me was screaming at me that day.

What if he sees it?

What if it was a mistake? What was I thinking? I should take it down. Is it too late to delete it? But people like the story. My readers are in love with it in fact. Do I care though? I’m in pain. I’m in so much pain. I can’t live like this. I shouldn’t have to live like this. Not anymore. Not after everything I’ve done to heal — to get to the other side. I’m deleting this story at once!

I did not delete the story.

Instead, I suffered like a champ. I’d decided to write about it — to write about him and our 2 months together. My time with him had become the most traumatic experience of my life. And yet, here I was retraumatizing myself, writing about him like someone was paying me to do so.

I was so scared after publishing the story. I was shaking. My heart was racing. And every time my phone rang, I was so sure it was him. My body went into a full-blown panic attack that day. Yes, the whole day.

And still, I did not delete the story.

“He doesn’t read my work,” I reminded myself. “He doesn’t read anything that doesn’t revolve around him. I blocked him on all social media platforms. I’m okay.”

So, I pushed on. I went through that day and the day after that and the day after that.

Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. Over time, my fears evaporated. My neurosis dissolved and I wrote other stories. I wrote stories that somehow mimicked the flow, the structure, and the music of my traumatizing story. And I enjoyed it.

I’d stumbled upon my voice. My most traumatizing story had helped me develop my writing style. Here’s how.

Emotions = Authenticity = Your Unique Voice

Everything I write goes through one simple test before I publish it. From blog stories to tweets, to emails, to WhatsApp messages. Yes, even WhatsApp messages: It all goes through a simple filter:

“Do I love it?” Do I enjoy reading it? Am in love with the verbs I’ve chosen, the sentences I’ve constructed. Am I obsessed with the cadence — the music — my paragraphs create in my mind’s ear?

The pieces I’d written before always felt less than. They didn’t sound like me. They sounded like Zulie Rane. Like Tim Denning and David Majister. (Yes, I went there)

But then I wrote about my toxic situationship. It was an emotional story and I’d never felt more alive while writing. Yes, I was scared afterward. But while writing the story, I was in love — with how quickly, how urgently the words flowed out of me. The story practically wrote itself.

And that’s what emotions do.

Emotions are the juice of life. They lubricate everything they touch (even your writing). Emotions get you into a state of flow seamlessly.

Trying to write without a background emotion, for me, feels like raking sharp nails across my mind. It’s painful. It’s hard. It produces my most boring writing.

So, I’ve learned to channel emotional energy into my work. I’ve learned to read or watch poetry before I write. I’ve learned to allow myself to feel my emotions. To channel my anger, my joy, my love, my anxiety, my depression into my writing.

I’ve learned that Emotions = Intensity, intensity = authenticity, and authenticity = my unique voice.

That Said, Do Not Publish Anything You’re Not Okay With

It’s easy to abuse yourself in the name of emotional intimacy. It’s easy to surrender your privacy — to blow up your boundaries while chasing a flow state. It’s easy to write about things, to write about yourself — and your people in a way that leaves you open, wounded, and alone.

I learned this the hard way. I learned it by the anxiety — the fire — that evaded my veins after I published my first emotional story.

“If I wrote like you, I’d feel violated,” a friend said to me after reading my work.

He was right. Violence is what it feels like. Violence is exactly what it felt like in the beginning. Over time I became better.

Over time, I learned that writing is like acting. That I have to feel my emotions, channel them into my work, but once I’m done with them, I must put them aside. I must create space between myself and my past — between myself and my stories. I’m not my stories. I’m not my emotions.

If I so much as feel any anxiety — any emotional resistance — towards my writing, if I’m violating myself for a story, I leave it alone. I move on with life. I allow myself to heal. I allow life to mature my experience. To smooth over and heal my resistance until I’m okay with the story. Until I feel peaceful about the story.

Because peace = my truth, my truth = my most authentic self, and my most authentic self = my unique voice.

But My Voice Is Always Changing

My voice is not static. My writing style isn’t an immutable monolith. There’s no such thing. I’m still learning. I’m still growing. I’m always changing. But in all this turmoil is one constant — my truth.

“Am I my most authentic self, right now? Am I saying what I want to say in the exact way I want to say it? Am I fighting with the story? Am I resisting my words?” Ask yourself these questions. And answer honestly.

And if you’re still struggling to be yourself, latch onto an emotion — any emotion. Channel it and write from that place of intensity. This is what has worked for me. This is how the most traumatizing story I ever wrote helped me refine my writing voice.

Assumpta Nalubowa is a professional feeler of emotions. Every time she feels an emotion — any emotion —, a leaf on the lemon tree outside her bedroom window turns into a one hundred dollar bill. If you enjoyed this story, check out the one below next or check out more of her work here:

And if you’re not a Medium member, join Medium today using my referral link. PS: I get a portion from your monthly fee at no extra cost to you.