From Release to Repression
Fucking hell, we destroy our best selves. I spent 9 years writing the best book I could have written about a subject so traumatic and in need of dialogue and expression that I rehearsed every word on every page a hundred times…and then…I snapped shut.
I released the book, a delusional and deceptively grandiose verb which felt more like invisibly returning a single book onto one of a million shelves that sit inside a world library, a building so vast that it has no edges or walls, a building that stretches beyond the horizon, beyond our vision, and which continues to expand like a lung gasping for breath. After releasing the book, which made me feel so excited, brave and heroic, I un-heroically ran away. From release to repression.
Terrified that the dark side of the book would stain my reputation among my lovely family and my lovely, approved job as a teacher.
From release to repression.
Thanks to two books for waking me up to both the pointlessly edited version of myself, and the science supporting the events of the book.
Thank you to Jamie Catto for writing Insanely Gifted – Turn Your Demons Into Rocket Fuel,
a book that makes me see it’s unacceptable to live in fear of being unacceptable, to live in fear of A Kick In The Gurus being unacceptable. The fact your book was released via my dream publishing home – Canongate – is an equally prescient ‘wake up and be yourself’ moment. A couple of years back, I sat outside the Canongate stall at the London Book Fair and was too terrified to speak to the humans inside about the book, even though the only reason I had come to the fair was to find the Canongate stall, to see if I could meet a real, live, Canongate person.
The fact that I listened to your 1 Giant Leap album while editing the novel, plus the fact that I didn’t know the fact that 1 Giant Leap was your album when I bought your book, shows you that some facts are cool enough to get a kick out of.
Thank you, Bessel van der Kolk for writing The Body Keeps The Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma in which the impact of trauma upon the body and mind is discussed with dizzying eloquence, detail and care. My lead antihero, Maxi, is relentlessly destroyed and misshaped by such effects.
How dare I do this to him? How could I have cared for this character for so long, promised to tell his story and prevent it from happening to others, then just abandoned him behind a wall of my own fear?
While writing the book, I was absolutely myself. Totally strapped into my own identity.
Post-book, trying to talk about the book and, dare I believe I can say it, actually market the thing (what the hell is marketing anyway?) I shrink to invisible.
No.
Don’t do it, Maclean. (My pen name; a union of the surnames of my mum and dad. Pronounced ‘Maclain’. I’m still repressing my own name, which will be explained another time.)
No. The truth is, readers are changed by this book. The truth is the fuller, unseen parts of our existence crave intense experiences. The truth is that under pressure, we have an inner Maxi.
This post isn’t a salesman knocking politely on your door. It’s a fellow fictionhead and author with a screwdriver set, dismantling your door until there is nothing between you and your right to intense experiences. Novels should be emotional experiences: go experience a meltdown.
A Kick In The Gurus by Maclean Mottram. Now unrepressed and available.
Maclean Mottram 