BWS 03.08.23 report: Meditation on Heartbreak—A Writer’s Story by Laura Pratt

Laura Pratt is a journalist, writer, and book editor whose second book, Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, was published in January 2023 by Penguin Random House Canada. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction. She lives in Toronto with her kids and dog.

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Everybody said writing the book was the best part, that the stretch that followed was a lot less fun. I went through the exercise feeling that, waiting for the good stuff to get cinched up into a tight, little fist of drudgery and duty. That happened, to a certain extent, and there’s no question that the writing was the greatest pleasure of my four-plus-year exploit. Still, the after-writing hasn’t been as bad as the doomsayers predicted. It’s been taxing in a new kind of way, calling upon faculties like self-promotion and public speaking. But it’s not been as unpleasant as I feared. Save a notable exception about which nobody warned me.

Here’s what it is: I did not know that writing a book would cause my friends to turn on me, enraged over choices I made about how to live my life.

As I describe in my memoir, Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, heartbreak is not a state that attracts boundless sympathy. There is an end date for people’s indulgence of your devastation, and when you skid beyond it, you know. The consolation is turned off, the censure starts to fly. Your heartbreak is up for grabs, the subject, now, of disgust and derision.

First, my friend John took his leave of our long connection in the wake of my enduring sorrow, simmering with resentment for the way he perceived me to be presuming with my thesis that my heartbreak outranked his.

For Deidre and Ed, the relationship severing was my doing, undertaken in response to the criticisms they made of me that I thought were unfair and none of their business. But maybe that’s my naïveté talking. Maybe when you write a memoir, you renounce your right to your business.

Anyway, it came as a shock, these rejections of my way of doing things. It felt invasive and it made me consider the wisdom, after all, of having exposed so much of my life. I don’t regret it and I’m not so naïve that I thought I’d get through the experience of inviting people into my story unscathed. I just didn’t anticipate the privilege they’d assume that bought them.

As my story goes, my erstwhile love left me with nary an explanation, and then failed to respond to my subsequent efforts to understand his decision. After, in the throes of twitchy dissatisfaction and desperate for relief, I kept those efforts up, very occasionally texting or emailing him to ask what the hell happened and remind him of my continued existence. For his part, he kept up efforts too—those of failing to respond or recognize my existence.

So Deidre and Ed called my behaviour “harassment” and said I wasn’t respecting my heartbreaker’s situation with my overtures. They didn’t mention that he’d denied me a voice and the grace of acknowledgement. Neither did they note the idea that my harmless gestures (he can block me and likely has) might be my entitlement, given the callousness of his dismissal of our long relationship.

Anyway, I spent some time trying to make my case with each of these folks, but abandoned the effort when I realized I was defending the choice I’d made in order to survive heartbreak—just as other people make their own choices in order to survive their own heartbreaks every day. And they’re not required to defend them, at least not publicly, in the glare of a memoir’s advent on the scene. Not like I was.

I won’t talk to these friends anymore. They overstepped their access to me with these outbursts and demonstrated their ignorance of the inferred contract memoirists make with their readers.

Here’s what it is: memoirists will uncover secrets of life on earth in exchange for some mercy and forbearance for the sacrifices the exercise asks of them. The memoir community needs to evolve, I think, to include a more nuanced appreciation for what seeing this contract through involves. In its evolved iteration, it needs to pay attention to both the memoirists’ role in making an oblation to a strain of universal human suffering and of the rights the witnesses thereto enjoy to question it. So long as folks don’t realize that people who write about their lives are conducting an act of service to everyone else (i.e., those individuals who can learn about the human condition without having to bare their own souls or plumb their own suffering), they’re going to feel entitled to pass judgement on particulars.

It’s a tricky argument to take on, the one that defends memoirists’ rights to their own discretion while simultaneously celebrating them for abandoning just that. But trashing writers for choices they made in pursuit of truth is never acceptable.

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BWS 03.08.23: In Case You Missed It!

We had an amazing group of writers talk about their work and read their poetry to us this past Wednesday. With the full moon making us all feel a little funky, it was a great evening with topics of romance, intimacy, and heartbreak.

Click here to see the recorded live stream of our March 8th event featuring Yolande House, Anto Chan, Seán Carson Kinsella, and Daniel Sarah Karasik, with guest speaker Laura Pratt who spoke to us about writing on heartbreak.

We are so thrilled to still be offering our events in a hybrid format. Please stay tuned for more updates about our next events and readers.

Brockton Writers Series 08.03.23: Daniel Sarah Karasik

Daniel Sarah Karasik (they/them) is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection Plenitude (Book*hug Press). Their work has been recognized with the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award, the CBC Short Story Prize, and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award.

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either/or

writing (making) is hard, but not writing (not making) is sad. it follows that life is always either hard but not sad, sad but not hard, or both hard and sad. perhaps most commonly, life is sad then hard then sad in a flutter-quick alternation that feels like, but is not, simultaneity. there can be no period of time during which life is neither hard nor sad, because one is always either writing (making) or not writing (not making). rude

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faintly

self as Russian doll,

ancient iterations dwindling

to motes, concentric

nuclei, evading

the unassisted eye, though

sometimes, even after

a long, long while,

when the light’s just right:

a trace. smudge of a whale

in a still sea. still

alive

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“either/or” and “faintly” from Plenitude © 2022 by Daniel Sarah Karasik. Used with permission of Book*hug Press.

Brockton Writers Series 08.03.23: Yolande House

Yolande House is a bisexual, disabled writer whose essays have appeared in literary magazines such as The Rumpus, Grain, Joyland, and The Fiddlehead. Her writing has made it to the finalist round at Creative Nonfiction three times, and her Entropy essay was selected as one of the magazine’s “Best of 2018.” She can be found online at www.yolandehouse.com, on Instagram (@healthruwriting), and on Twitter (@herstorian). She is currently working on a childhood memoir, as well as an essay collection about invisible disabilities.

How to Write About Trauma in a Safer Way

When I first wrote about childhood physical and emotional abuse in 2006, I did almost everything wrong. 

I wrote for hours at a time, scrunched over my computer, interspersing angry rants amidst spare details of memory, tears streaming down my face. Meals were takeout and junk food was my constant writing fuel. Exercise was a short walk to the café where I continued to rant-write with friends, timing ourselves to see who could write the most words in a given amount of time, what we called a “word war.” I usually won. 

It was National Novel Writing Month, where enthusiasts aim to write a 50,000 word novel. I crossed the finish line on day thirteen, my friends blinking their astonishment. By November 30^th, I’d doubled my word count, clocking in at just over 100,000 words. Triumph!

Two weeks later, I rushed to the ER with severe chest pain similar to a heart attack.

My father held my hand as we waited for a doctor. “How did this happen?” he asked, shaking his head. 

“I think it’s from writing about my childhood for NaNoWriMo,” I said, eyes lowered. “About Mom. I was crying every day, not sleeping well, not eating well…” His face cleared and he nodded. Of course. 

Test after test, the doctors found nothing wrong. Finally, I was diagnosed with severe acid reflux—so severe I could only drink water and swallow a little bread for the next week. My naturopathic doctor told me later that if I hadn’t followed her strict, low-acid diet, I would have developed an ulcer.

I threw my memoir manuscript in a drawer and slammed it shut. When I read it again a couple years later, I thought, No wonder I got sick! Grief burned through the thick stack and distress etched each page. My stomach clenched. I shoved the papers back.

Now, twelve years later, my writing is much more emotionally processed. I’ve learned to explore painful memories with an aim toward healing. But I still find myself needing to tread carefully in the rushing waters of remembered trauma, finding toeholds and grabbing onto tree branches to stay upright through the thunderous tide of resurfacing pain. 

I’ve come up with some guidelines for writing about painful events in a more balanced way. I still mess this up, but when I do my best to live these out, both my body and my writing are lighter, happier, healthier.

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1. Don’t push. If you don’t feel ready to re-visit trauma, then don’t. A fiction writing friend once told me, “You’ve been writing this for seven years now, right? You should be done by now.” My creative non-fiction instructor said, “We’re making art. It takes as long as it takes—usually years, maybe decades.” My childhood memoir has taken eleven years so far. When I made a push to finish it early in 2018, my stomach issues returned. Now, it’s on the back burner again. It’ll take as long as it takes.
2. Listen to your body. Tune in when it says no. Do you know how your body says no? Is it a tightening in your gut? A feeling of dread and dragging feet? Procrastinating by playing online games? Overworking? Your body is a compass to your emotions and your limits. Stop when you need to.
3. Stay in balance. When writing about difficult subjects, think of yourself like a see-saw. Counterbalance challenging stories with subjects that make you happy. Write about your gratitude for something a difficult person taught you. How did you grow from the experience?
4. Take long breaks. Vary difficult writing with submissions to literary journals, revising stories on other subjects, free writing, or critiquing stories for others. If you need to put a subject aside for months or years, do it. If you suddenly realize, “I don’t ever want to write about this,” trust and honour your limits.
5. Practice more self-care than you think you need. Eat nourishing food you enjoy. Devise a daily or weekly exercise goal, (one year, mine was to play Pokémon Go every day. A friend gets chased by the undead with the Zombies, Run! app). Give yourself naps, an early bedtime, the gift of sleeping in.
6. Take a class. Following a step-by-step process with feedback and support from a trusted mentor is helpful when I’m struggling to approach a subject or am otherwise not feeling well. 
7. Get support. You need an outlet for the intense emotions resurfacing as you write. Talk to a friend or therapist about how you feel.
8. Keep a writing process journal where you record your feelings about what you’re writing. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ve recently started The Artist’s Way, and my three stream-of-consciousness morning pages have helped me feel productive even if I’m only recounting my shopping list. When I explore emotions on the page, my other writing tasks seem to flow more easily afterward.
9. Start a writing group to support writers like you. You could begin with a meditation and then do a few short exercises before each person gets twenty minutes to talk about how their writing is going, how they’re feeling, and what old emotions and memories are surfacing.
10. Add a new relaxation technique to your routine: meditation, yoga, trauma releasing exercises, colouring, journaling, bubble baths, evening walks.

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It’s essential to not only honour your process, but to discover and develop one that works for you, whatever form it takes. And it’s an ongoing lesson, one that teaches me new things all the time—even with this article!

I wrote half of this piece in a couple of hours. Then ongoing stomach issues slowed me down, and it took me another two weeks to put together the second half. But I kept at it, telling myself I was writing this because I need these guidelines as much as anyone else. Now that it’s done, it’s a gift from my well self to my ill self. Both of them deserve to tell their story and stay safe while doing it.

Brockton Writers Series 08.03.23: Anto Chan

Anto Chan is a queer HK Chinese-Canadian spoken word performance artist, writer, facilitator, entrepreneur, producer, and caregiver. He performed his one-person show Love So Far at the Montréal Fringe Festival in 2019. He currently co-curates and hosts the variety show FreeFlow Showcase, and his poetry chapbook Romantic Reflections was released in 2020. He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of artists to overcome personal obstacles, leading to sharing their stories authentically. His life’s work is to create and support meaningful art that centres around the journey of growth, self-love, and healing intergenerational trauma. He recently started studying Expressive Art Therapy with Create Institute.

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The unfolding of self-discovery has been a lifetime of feeling as if I’m not enough. Consistently pleasing my family’s views on sacrifice and big-picture living, left me disconnected from my reality and identity. Only this past year have I fully accepted my queerness, including it in my writing, my stories and sharing with friends/some family. The deep joy that has come from stepping into my full self has been immeasurable, and this poem was a checkpoint in this ever-expanding experience. 

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The In-Between

She told me it wasn’t common 

that I loved flowers as much as I do

Realizing that I am not the norm 

Well for a guy she says 

I like that about you 

A soft kiss onto my beard 

That I wear to make sure 

you know I’m a man 

The masculine presented 

Ensuring the feminine repressed 

Just like every time my mom asks me 

If she can expect grandkids soon 

I tell her she can expect it 

Luckily I have a brother and a sister 

Both following the lead 

Of the classic road

Filling the void 

As I avoid the queries…

I am queer in so many ways 

I wondered how to explain to her 

The best way I could 

We ended on “if there was no women on earth I would with a man, 

I just love women too much”

The only vision of her children is in nuclear families

But maybe that’s why ours 

was so toxic and destructive and radioactive 

How did I myself realize? 

I just met enough straight people to know I’m not them 

For sure. 

And I’m queer in all my doings, 

my career

my friends

my performances

my gender roles in relationships 

The amount of comfort I find being the small spoon 

Small enough to be decorative 

Side note, whichever way you enjoy cuddling

is telling of what you enjoy in the bedroom too, 

I enjoy big and small spoon, 

vers/switch as they call it…

think about yours!  

For years felt the imbalance 

with the numb arm 

never resting my head on lovers bosoms 

Nurtured held 

I also enjoy being pursued

to have dinner bought for me too 

And my hair brushed softly 

And pulled 

Patiently pure care for one another 

But I date women still

so why is it important to share my queerness? 

I can be hidden from

the possibilities of judgment 

be among straight passing people 

Because this is my truth 

the reality of my existence 

deserves to be present

In silence takes away 

the representation of the in between

The crossroads of the intersectionality 

The not this/not that/just so 

The goldilocks and three bears

porridge just right 

Have a stove and pot to heat it up 

to your liking

Customizing our lives 

our love to exactly as we need 

Cause close enough isn’t enough anymore 

So just like my performance, I don’t know how to label what I do,

I wrote miscellaneous—misterlaneous 

These checked boxes are too general and generic 

These labels geriatric

I am just me

Flowers in my hair 

Surrounding me with scentimental aromas 

my love and gender and identity

Taking Pride in persistence 

We’ve made it 

In a space that’s here 

to be our big spoon 

to hold us wholly

Masculinity femininity infinity 

And beyond

Because we are Outta this world.

Original Art by Samantha Dennis @samanthadenniis

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Photo by Andre Saunders @dreygasai

Brockton Writers Series 08.03.23: Seán Carson Kinsella

Seán Carson Kinsella (ê akimihtt nêhi(y/th)aw/otipemisiwak/Nakawé/Irish) is migizi dodem (Bald Eagle Clan) and Indigequeer/aayahkwêw/tastawiyiniw with ancestors and extended kin who were signatories of Treaties 4, 6 and 8. They are a sought keynote speaker, storyteller, and smutty poet and are have been featured in the Toronto Festival of Authors, the Naked Heart Festival, and are a regular reader at Glad Day’s Smut Peddlers reading series.

triptych of Indigequeer desire (giimikan) 

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the word for an orange 

in nêhiyawêwin speaks to the colour

of the juice currently splashed on your

chin. in the queer brunch please with

all the mutual cruising, i am fixated on

the small drip as it meets the creases

of your mouth and has dribbled down

poised to fall on the paper tablecloth. 

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i want to tell you about how many of

the stories i wrote with oranges end 

with piles of sweat covered beings 

incorporating each other but it would 

mean leaning close to your ear and

i would be tempted to use tongue to

lap the moisture up. when we split

the bill and leave you lean over and

whisper that you are as slick and

juicy as those slices, cut the way

i would at home, and that you want

to find a place just private enough 

to avoid public fines and colonial

justice systems obsessed with 

decency but give no mind at

all to the small acts that add up

to genocide, the trauma of which

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we come against over and over

until we find ways to spit it out 

like an errant seed that brings the

potential for new growth in us. 

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sour key

i tell you i am like a sour key, tangy on the outside

and sweet and gelatinous on the in. you tell me it

is your favourite thing to suck on and smirk when

i ask “candy…or?”. we’ve moved on to topics of

land back and sovereignty and i find myself just

staring at your lips as they say the brilliant things

and realize when we shift positions that i am wet,

very soaking wet. when we leave the cafe, you 

ask, “still thinking about that sour key?” and i

drop my eyes and turn crimson. “you are lucky

red is your colour” you say as you pull a sour

key out of your bag, and slowly unwrap it. “now

let’s see if we can find a place to make this stick.”

your tongue is slowly wiping the sugar off and

i tell you “i have a few ideas, but you may need

to tie me up and try a few before we see where

it holds the longest.” you nod, look deep into my

eyes and say “let’s see where the night takes us.”

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sacretest of liquids

i’ll always be one to stain pots and sheets with the sacretest of 

liquids. cedar can leave rings if you leave it too long, and i’m

one to always remind myself and sweeties that it is just stuff

that is meant to be used, thanked and honoured. i am as 

sentimental as anyone, and still keep my kookum’s dishes in a 

rubbermaid in the basement to use on special occasions – 

her first real set of china that my auntie and nimama got her. 

to exist as an ndn is to know we will cause these marks and 

to keep going – for like the tricksters in our stories we tell in 

when snow is on the ground, life is about learning, making 

mistakes and figuring out how to correct them, those little 

rings and marks on sheets reminders of all we have learned, 

and the simple pleasures of finding medicines that help us 

survive in whatever forms we can – away from the ideologies 

that tried to tell us we were savage and heathen, when we

are still just trying to find those sacred moments of creation,

and both tea and sheets are meant to be shared with as 

many sweeties as medicine and space will allow us to find.

Wednesday, March 8th, 2023—6:30 p.m.

Brockton Writers Series presents readings by:

Daniel Sarah Karasik

Seán Carson Kinsella

Anto Chan

Yolande House

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Special note: As we adapt with current social distancing regulations, we’re happy to announce our event will be hosted in-person at the Glad Day Bookshop, located at 499 Church St., Toronto. We will also live stream the event on the Brockton Writers Series YouTube channel! The event starts at 6:30 p.m.

The reading is PWYC (suggested $3-$5) and features a Q&A with the writers afterward. Books are available for sale.

 If you’d like to donate, please do so here.

Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.

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GUEST SPEAKER

“Meditations on Heartbreak: A Writer’s Story” by Laura Pratt

Laura Pratt is a journalist, writer, and book editor whose second book, Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, was published in January 2023 by Penguin Random House Canada. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction. She lives in Toronto with her kids and dog.

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READERS

Daniel Sarah Karasik (they/them) is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection Plenitude (Book*hug Press). Their work has been recognized with the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award, the CBC Short Story Prize, and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award.

Seán Carson Kinsella (ê akimihtt nêhi(y/th)aw/otipemisiwak/Nakawé/Irish) is migizi dodem (Bald Eagle Clan) and Indigequeer/aayahkwêw/tastawiyiniw with ancestors and extended kin who were signatories of Treaties 4, 6 and 8. They are a sought keynote speaker, storyteller, and smutty poet and are have been featured in the Toronto Festival of Authors, the Naked Heart Festival, and are a regular reader at Glad Day’s Smut Peddlers reading series.

Anto Chan is a queer HK Chinese-Canadian spoken word performance artist, writer, facilitator, entrepreneur, producer, and caregiver. He performed his one-person show Love So Far at the Montréal Fringe Festival in 2019. He currently co-curates and hosts the variety show FreeFlow Showcase, and his poetry chapbook Romantic Reflections was released in 2020. He is passionate about mentoring the next generation of artists to overcome personal obstacles, leading to sharing their stories authentically. His life’s work is to create and support meaningful art that centres around the journey of growth, self-love, and healing intergenerational trauma. He recently started studying Expressive Art Therapy with Create Institute.

Yolande House is a bisexual, disabled writer whose essays have appeared in literary magazines such as The Rumpus, Grain, Joyland, and The Fiddlehead. Her writing has made it to the finalist round at Creative Nonfiction three times, and her Entropy essay was selected as one of the magazine’s “Best of 2018.” She can be found online at www.yolandehouse.com, on Instagram (@healthruwriting), and on Twitter (@herstorian). She is currently working on a childhood memoir, as well as an essay collection about invisible disabilities.