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Write what you (don’t want to) know… thumb

Write what you (don’t want to) know…

sweetsWhen I started writing the children’s novel The Serpent House I thought I broadly knew the subject matter it would explore. Life in service, inspired by the stories of my three great-aunts. People’s responses to illness and disfigurement. And, of course, a story inspired by the real medieval leper hospital that has been buried for centuries under the pavements in the village where I live.
And then the snakes crept, or slithered, in. Don’t ask me how that happened. I am extremely ophidiophobic – in other words, I am not only afraid of meeting a snake or being bitten by one, which would be rational. I cannot look at a picture of one or touch a toy one. I even get an unpleasant frisson when I type the word ‘snake’.
This fear is shared by approximately a third of the adult human population. It is the most commonly reported phobia and there have been studies which suggest this has something to do with the times when our primate ancestors had to survive and breed in environments dominated by reptiles.
So snakes and the very thought of them are, for me, to be avoided. But there they were – such a presence in the story that they formed the title of the book.
It certainly caused me some research problems. When I wanted to find out how a large snake might kill its prey, what it would eat or the effects of its venom, I had to get my long-suffering husband to do the Googling. I could be certain that along with the text there would be a huge technicolour image that would send me running, gibbering, from my PC.
I had to ask a kind herpetologist a string of questions about their habits and things that a writer needs to know, such as what a room with snakes in it would smell like, and how they feel to the touch.
What I had no trouble imagining, though, was just how terrified my protagonist would be. If, as a writer, we aim to make things worse and worse for our characters, then being surrounded by snakes was as bad as it could possibly get. Annie had to survive her worst fears in order to escape with her life and I found it very easy to write about how that might feel.
Perhaps that is the answer to the question from a baffled friend, which was: ‘So why did you decide to write about something you’re afraid of?’ Like the darkest fairytales, the stories we tell ourselves help us to face up to and overcome the monsters in our heads. And the writing seems to take on an extra power.
So some writerly advice with apologies to Susan Jeffers: Feel the fear and write it anyway.
What would you write into your own Room 101, where your worst fears live?


Posted by author: Barbara Henderson

5 thoughts on “Write what you (don’t want to) know…

  • Wasps! I’m terrified of them ever since I was stung about eight years ago while in bed. Brilliant idea to write about them, although it’s giving me the creeps even thinking about it!

  • I’m afraid it didn’t conquer the fears, Olivia. I’m just as hysterical when I see even a rubber snake as ever I was. I had to explain to the publisher that no, I couldn’t do any publicity pictures involving snakes. Not unless they CGI’d them on later!

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