How Metaphor Changed My Writing

Notebooks.

Like every red-blooded woman, I’ve bought or been given dozens of notebooks over time.  Small ones, big ones, leather ones, simple ones with whimsical covers.  All so deliciously inviting. Come, they say, write something wonderful in these blank pages. Capture all your thoughts, dreams, and visions here. Create! Create! Create!

I love them. But can I confess something to you?

90% of those beautiful notebooks remain empty.

Oh, I have so many plans. Prayer journals. Bible notes. Random ideas. Story ideas. Diaries.  I always begin, but like a New Year’s resolution that sputters out by February, my inspiration to fill all that blank space dies after a handful of pages. 

The good news is I think I know the reason I, at least, waste all that glorious potential. It comes down to a simple truth about myself: I do not now, nor have I ever, liked the way my naked, raw thoughts sound on paper. In fact, ick.  I cringe just thinking about trying to keep a traditional diary.

I know, I know, I know. I’m a writer. I’m a blogger. I’m supposed to capture all my little thought butterflies in my net of paper and pin them down before they get away. I should have reams of notebooks overflowing with the spillage of my guts. 

But I don’t. And I probably never will. You know what I do have, though?

Novels.

Poems.

My life, in disguise. 

That’s right, a whole lot of me is dumped into the pages of my stories, but you’d likely never know it, even if you know me very well. I’m not talking about giving a character my personality traits and slapping a different name on ‘em. I’m talking about weaving elements of my life—my troubles, often—into the very fabric of my stories. 

Let me give you some examples.

Writer’s block has, at various times in my writing career, made me want to run out into moving traffic. I have to do something with all that pent-up frustration, so I gift it to my characters to carry. Only, I hide it. How do I do that?

Metaphor.

I flipping love metaphors.  They can be, when done well, a beautiful way to say something without saying it directly. Like a truth whispered in the dark, metaphors help me display my thoughts in a cloaked sort of way.

For instance, there is a character in my novel who is known as a Teller. Tellers are not allowed to speak except for whatever divine insights they receive from their gods.  But one day the gods stop talking to this Teller. She has lost the Words.  She is unable to be of use to her people, and lives out her shame in exile.

Another way I dealt with writer’s block was to give my main character, Danger, the inability to wield powerful weapons like swords and battle hammers due to his physical weakness. It’s a recurring problem throughout the storyline that underlines my own continual battle with words. Indeed, writer’s block can make the pen feel like a sword that you just can’t swing.  But I find it so much more therapeutic to write a metaphor than to simply state in a journal, “I have writer’s block. I want to kill myself.”

One last example. There is a place in my novel called the Wastes of Exile. I created it in large part because I couldn’t, well, create. The Wastes are ugly and dry and dead, full of “halfdeads”, creations that are only half formed, and serve as a source of torment to their creator.  This metaphor is a little more on the nose, but it illustrates how barren I feel whenever I cannot do the thing I was made to do. 

So there you have it, dear readers—the power of metaphor. It transformed something very painful and frustrating in my life into something visceral and useful. I hope perhaps it can do the same for you.

And as for the notebooks?

I’m feeling the urge to buy a new one, actually.

Surely this notebook will be the notebook that changes my life😉.