Writing Motivation: Workarounds for Those Emotional Triggers

FOR MY DOG, IT is the sight of the cooler that gets him going. For some of you, it might be the sound of a much-feared relative’s voice. For others, perhaps, a mere memory can set in motion a prescribed set of negative responses. In contemporary parlance, the “it” in each of these examples is called a trigger and, in my work as a memoir coach and book editor, I hear and read a lot about triggers, and how they prevent writing. Triggered, we halt. And then, during a recent online memoir class, a word occurred to me that may supply you with some writing motivation in the form of a trigger workaround.

I spend a lot of my time talking to therapists. Not only do I have a large number of them as clients and students in my memoir writing classes, but I interview them regularly as I make my own way through understanding what I hear, see and witness in my editing and teaching roles. The combined experience I get working with writers, and processing that work with therapists, has given me real respect for triggers.  The word has done us a load of good, person-to-person, but as writers, it strands us. We are left with the identification of only the problem but with no strategy beyond that. In other words, it leaves us only with an Act One of a three-act experience. We identify what is at stake. But that’s it.

How to solve this?

I offer this: The word “accelerant.”

It’s a tough word, I know, one that is regularly associated with the crime of arson. It speaks to what makes the fire burn hot and fast, though in my dictionary (the book, not the paltry one you find online or in your computer), the first definition is far less hot and speaks only of “something that speeds up a process.”

And so I think of my dog.

How to Identify Your Transcendence

Roscoe is a rescue hound out of America’s South. His passage from Demopolis, Alabama, to Upstate New York was via a transport truck that apparently left him with a loathing for all moving vehicles. Ever since we got him, he has experienced varying levels of carsickness. Even now, when he sees a packed bag by the back door – a suitcase, a grocery bag or a cooler – he dives behind a certain rocking chair and shivers. Those visuals act as accelerants, speeding up the process of his dread.

I’ve been thinking about this for weeks now, ever since he last cowered behind the chair. Finally, I figured out what to do: I realized that I needed to draw on a positive accelerant. There are such things, of course: For humans, the whiff of a perfume, the ring of a phone, the calling of a beloved voice can move us forward. And while knick-knacks and mementoes can move us back in time — so can standardized souvenirs, photos, music and gifts — they also cue pleasant emotional responses. In other words, as much as the negative reminders can hurl us into a bad state, positive reminders can reanimate cherished events.

How does this apply to writing motivation?

Can You Identify Your Accelerant?

During a recent class, as yet another writer wondered aloud if she’d ever get past her trigger moment, I thought about that word “accelerant.”

What happens when I ask you to identify your accelerant for fixing what is wrong? What would you reply if I inquired about how you changed some behavior or transcended some negative circumstance? What did you use, learn, apply or defer to that sped up the process of healing?

For instance, did your faith in God accelerate your healing from abuse? Was it your dog who led you out of grief? Was your method of redemption one you adopted from some therapy?

To write memoir you must be able to identify, define and describe your transcendence. This means you must know what brought you up as well as down. And when I ask myself to identify both the negative and the positive accelerants of my story of transcendence, I feel a short rise — the kind of lift that is an invitation to write. It’s very different from what I feel when I ask myself to identify my trigger; then, I feel only the onset of dread. What happens to you?

Maybe nothing. The way I teach memoir is unique to me, and it’s not everyone’s preferred method, I know. Those who want to write autobiography, for instance, don’t want to use my techniques. Those who want to tell, and not show, don’t like it much, either. But for those of you who want to produce work with a universal appeal, written to the best of your talents, this word might provide some writing motivation. I hope so.

And so I ask you: What are your accelerants?

One Word Writing Motivation

Perhaps the question is better asked this way: What was your accelerant into the issue and what is your accelerant out of that state? If my dog continues to fear all rides in the car, he will suffer. His accelerant into his dreaded state is a visual cue of the ride to come. So, into the car we placed a fleece bed along with a large fleece toy that we refer to as his “comfort baby.” Neither of these ever leaves the car and both can be seen the moment that hatchback door goes up. He is greeted each time with the immediate reinforcement of a comfort found nowhere else. Accelerant in, accelerant out.

Can you identify the accelerants in your tale? What created the issue and what provided the relief? Can you reduce those to one word each? To combat the rampant suspicion of people derived from your family of origin, did you have to learn trust? For your Type A, hyper-kinetic monkey mind, did you have to install a meditation practice? For the loneliness of widowhood, did you have to honor the value of solitude?

As you may already know, I do not believe in writer’s block. I believe that even giving it a name gives it energy that could otherwise be spent writing. And so I say to hell with it and try to help writers find workarounds to blunt its appeal. This is one of those.

What I’ve learned from my memoir students and clients, as well as from my friends — and from my own life, of course — is that triggers are real and terrifying and they threaten to stop us cold. They should be taken to professionals for the needed work and support to deal with them. But they should not stop your writing. So I offer this word — accelerant — to repurpose them, and to give you the writing motivation you deserve. First, we will acknowledge the existence of triggers; we will nod to their power, and then we will work on, fueled by our accelerant.

Writing motivation is all about the ways in which we speed up the process. And in this wild world of many responsibilities, traumas, joys, righteous causes, desires and the resulting exhaustion from all that is both good and evil, we need to find ways to get motivated and stay in the conversation.

I hope this helps.