My stories are about healing.
Specifically, I am interested in how love can heal our deepest wounds and transform our lives. However, for my characters to need healing, they had to experience some form of trauma. And if you have read my work, you know that the trauma that my characters face is real and raw.
I’ll never forget reading a comment for Maple Creek from a reader who had left an abusive husband. She said, “We spent three months in a women’s shelter. I knew when I started reading this book, what it was about. Very good writing.”
Now if I’m being honest, overall, Maple Creek was in many ways a mistake and a stain on my career. I was inexperienced in publishing and I was in a very dark place in my life mentally and emotionally. I didn’t have an editor, and the moment I finished the book my cursor hovered over the button to delete the manuscript permanently.
In a moment of panic I published the book typos and all to save it from being wiped out of existence… by me. I told myself that if even one person liked it, I would continue my writing career. But there was no way anyone would like it, right? And needless to say, the book created some pretty reviews. most of the initial emotional reactions to the book were anger and disgust. Part of me felt validated in my low self-esteem.
But then, something remarkable happened:
The book received good reviews, too.
And not just good reviews, but some reviews that the book had been an emotional journey for the readers, that they related to it, loved it, and were sharing it with their friends.
How could a disaster of a manuscript like that receive any positive reviews?
The answer is this: because the story, in many ways, was true.
Obviously the characters and setting were fiction, but the deeper truth behind what the characters were expereincing was real.
I had been in and out of dangerous and abusive relationships, just like Sarah. And just like Sarah, I had a complicated relationship with my parents and the places from my past. And the inspiration behind Sarah and Emily’s love sprouted from the recent realizations that I, too, wasn’t straight. I’m an asexual panromantic. I’d had feelings for men and women, including trans women. And my relationship with sex had been complicated by my orientation coupled with the abuse and social pressures that I faced being raised as a girl in a hyper-sexual culture. And yes, many of my friends are queer and trans, and they have faced the same discrimination that the characters in the book did.
All of my stories, from books like Caravan or Miner of Mine to short stories like “Hope” are based on the personal traumas and healing experiences from my own life.
That’s why I went back and had editors fix them instead of deleting them. That’s why I continued to write and went on to find deeper healing, which I now continue to reflect in my stories and share with readers.
Because life isn’t perfect.
When we make mistakes, we need to heal them, not throw ourselves away. Because we need to know that we aren’t alone in the world. And most of all, because I want my stories to remind my readers that there is love in the world, and no matter what trauma we face, we can heal.
Elizabeth Penn 