It has been one week of NaNoWriMo and so far I am blazing ahead full speed. I would love to take full credit for this, but let’s face it: I have been holding on to these characters inside my head for the better part of two years now. It is about time I finally gave them a reason and opportunity to come out!

The novel I am writing for this year’s NaNo is actually an idea I came up with while I was serving in Iraq a few years ago. Somewhere around August of that year our little 13-man team had been told we would be flying home soon. So after we finished tearing down our training center and wandered back across the open desert to the nearest firm base, we began the very frustrating process of trying to coordinate a flight. Every day we would gather all of our stuff, wander up to the flight line, sit on the side of the runway while one of us went up to the flight boss in hopes of negotiating a ride home. Every day we were told to come back the next day. This went on for ten days straight.

As I wrote about last week, I seem to do my best writing when I am trapped in a situation and am forced to make due with it. I didn’t have this insight back then, at least not enough to verbalize it. What I did have was 23.5 hours until the next time we would try to fly, and my trusty MacBook Pro. So, sitting in a little hut with no air conditioning and no where to go, I started writing down ideas for a book. This turned into characters, which turned into a plot, which turned into a full-blown story line which I outlined in detail using a flow chart format. I did this on the first day. The second day I started to write. By day 10 as I stepped onto the C5 Galaxy and left that sandy mess of a country for the last time, I had written 37,000 words. Not bad for a week and a half.

Last week I finished 15,000 words, which I thought was a great start to the month, especially considering it was the first time I have picked up this project since arriving home almost exactly two years ago. And since I was writing a story I had begun over there, and it was the second anniversary of my return home, I couldn’t help but reminisce.

What I started to see looking back really surprised me, and I thought I’d share some of what combat taught me about being creative.

A built-in pressure relief valve

In the years since coming home I have been a very happy guy. This is actually somewhat surprising to me, believe it or not. After sitting through hundreds of hours of briefings about PTSD I was beginning to think that I was destined to suffer its fate somehow. Truth be told, I actually spent a lot of time thinking about this while I was over there. Thankfully I have been given a clean bill of health after every checkup since returning home. Unfortunately, several of my friends that lived through the same experiences suffer PTSD today. Some of their symptoms are relatively minor; others are quite severe.

So what do I attribute this to? Well, there are dozens of factors, and almost none of them have anything to do with me. But one factor that I do attribute to my healthy return is that while I was there, I did something creative every single day. I wrote every chance I got. I kept a journal, I wrote poems, I wrote letters to anyone that would write to me. Aside from writing, I found other ways to get creative too. When we finished building our camp and started training folks in military tactics, I saw that we didn’t have anywhere to sit down outside. After a long day of grueling work, I just wanted a place to relax and unwind. So, I taught myself woodworking, and before anyone knew it I had made an entire campfire-type area filled with Adirondack Chairs and benches. I even made my own hammock out of 550 cord during a particularly long sandstorm.

What I can see now is that while I was engaged in these activities, I was actually processing things that I had experienced. I was in essence unloading the emotional baggage that had accumulated from the prolonged stress of working under such conditions. I think getting creative allowed me to somehow “get out of my head” and process things, almost on an unconscious level. I would just zone out while cutting wood or writing out poems, or sketching landscapes in pencil on the back of a cardboard box. It didn’t matter what I was doing, it all seemed to have the same effect. You too may have noticed that your own creativity turns up in frequency when times get tough. Creativity seems to be almost like a built-in pressure relief valve for some people. The danger then is not knowing this about ourselves, and choosing to refrain from doing something creative because we don’t feel like it. Looking back, I think being creative had a lot to do with me coming home with relatively few emotional and psychological wounds, especially when compared to some of my other service members who only sought to play video games or watch movies on their free time.

Stress is my strongest muse

Undoubtedly my ferocious pace at writing two years ago was made possible by the fact that I was so anxious about coming home. I would have done anything to pass the time. But as I consider what elements were at play during those ten days on the flight line, I can see that stress had a major role to play in both my motivation and inspiration.

I have always worked better on a deadline. I have known this about myself for a long time now. For some reason I do not do well with the “spread it out” approach. I prefer to procrastinate and wait until the deadline is looming, and then somehow with this added pressure behind me I can turn on the juice and get everything done.

This is probably very familiar to most of you. It is a well-known phenomenon seen commonly in gifted children, often to the dismay and consternation of parents and teachers. If I were more “logical” I would use the entire two months to work on the project gradually and in stages. But I have never worked that way. Call it lack of discipline if you’d like. All I know is that the pressure works.

But that pressure and stress is not limited to just providing motivation. I have found that pressure really encourages inspiration for me as well. For instance, if I just sit around and try to brainstorm for a project that has no timeframe, I will often sputter and wander around for hours, barely able to write down any ideas at all. When I sit down to come up with ideas for a project due in two or three days, I can come up with dozens of ideas in only a few minutes! Just look at the flight line example. I had outlined the entire book, complete with descriptions of characters and settings in one day. So, for me, activities like National Novel Writing Month work great because they put me in the very scenario that I am at my creative best.

A fly on the wall

When people experience traumatic events that are too horrific to discuss, often they will dissociate. Essentially dissociation is the separation of mind from body for a brief period of time. Some would describe it as being a fly on the wall, looking down on their own body. It is a defense mechanism that can be seen most commonly in young people, especially those that experience sexual assault or other traumatic events. These are things that their young minds are not equipped to handle. So, in a desperate attempt to escape the horrors that are happening to them in that moment, dissociation occurs.

While the entirety of my experience in Iraq was not filled with chaos and violence, the few times that things got really bad were enough to give anyone nightmares. What was particularly dangerous to me was that things would happen in an instant- far too fast to realize what was going on. But the lingering after effects: the images, the sounds, the smells… those are the elements that make telling those stories rather unpleasant.

The book I am writing now is based in the same region that I lived and worked in Iraq. I had not originally intended to write about any of my stories, but as I really delved into this project and began to write action scenes, it became quite easy to borrow from some of my own experiences. I would splice in bits and pieces of my own memories into the scenes. What I noticed was that I was able to do this without much trouble. What was more interesting to me was that I was essentially telling some of the most gruesome parts of what I had seen, but without the anxiety or emotional turmoil that I would often experience before.

I have heard many say that authors should not include themselves in their stories. Personally, I think that there is something to be said about writers using personal experiences as inspiration. I am not sure that it is possible to completely remove onesself from the process of writing fiction anyway. But for me, writing this book has allowed me to tell my story through a proxy, which somehow has taken away the fear and horror of it all. No longer am I reliving those events as I tell them, but now my character is living them; I am merely the fly on the wall watching it all happen.

That might seem morbid or disturbing to some. Perhaps it is. But that is the nature of combat. What I choose to do with my experiences and how I choose to deal with their after effects has very little to do with others’ opinions, and very much to do with how I will continue to live my life having been there and done that. To me, allowing those bits and pieces to come out in my writing has been a very therapeutic experience. I would hesitate to call it enjoyable… but I certainly have been having a lot of fun writing this thing.

This is probably not as novel a concept as I am making it out to be. After all, artists for centuries have been painting and sculpting images that give form to their inner experiences. You may find yourself pouring out your emotions into a creative work, only later to feel free of that burden you were carrying before. I guess I had never really considered what a useful tool being creative could be to allow those inner experiences to come out until now.

So, they may seem like odd lessons to learn, but they are valuable to me. Reflecting back on experiences has always seemed like the most effective method of learning. In my case understanding how my own creativity works to keep me sane and healthy has taught me a lot about myself. Of the many qualities we may possess, interestingly enough, creativity may be the biggest and most critical to our survival.

 p.s. no funny comments on the mustache. It was a phase…