REBECCA FOGG KNOWS THAT a writer can publish a first book. In fact, she knows that a writer can write a first memoir and publish it with a major publisher. So, writers, take heart. To find out more about how to write a first memoir, and publish it with a major publisher, listen in and read along.
Marion: Today, my guest is writer Rebecca Fogg, whose new book, Beautiful Trauma: An Explosion, an Obsession, and a New Lease on Life, is just out from Penguin Random House. It’s a memoir that explores the science of traumatic injury. In 2008, she walked away from her New York life and career and financial services to move to London where she co-founded the Institute of Pre-Hospital Care at London’s Air Ambulance and continues to work, write, and learn the Scottish fiddle. Beautiful Trauma is her first book. Welcome, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Thank you so much. I’m really thrilled to be here.
Marion: Well, spoiler alert, but this book is perfect. I mean that. It’s breathtaking to read. You open with an adrenaline rush that I will read and reread anytime I need my heart to get going at a certain pace. I can forget the treadmill, the bike, the walking uphill. Your opener. Literally, I got out the blood pressure machine. So why don’t set it up? And then, I’m going to ask you about writing it. Why don’t you tell us a bit about that opening and what it says?
Rebecca: So, I was up late one night working, as I was want to do in those days. About 2:30 in the morning, I decided it was time to go to bed, decided to brush my teeth, turned on the tap, nothing but air came out. So, I decided to figure out whether the toilet was also misbehaving, and as I flushed it, it exploded. And a sharp hunk of porcelain just raced right through the inside of my right wrist, partially amputating my hand. So, a 276-page story short, I called 911. I stopped the bleeding, and it was a life-changing experience.
Marion: Yeah. So writing this, I have to say I’ve rarely read such exquisite self-reporting, not only in that opener, but throughout the book. And my audience is writers. And they want the courage to jump into their stories this way. So they know better than to say, “I was born in 1975.” So, talk about the decision to open with this amount of tremendous energy, because once you do that, you can’t really back down, but you also can’t really keep up that pace. So, you’ll exhaust yourself and the reader, which you do not do. So, walk us through your decision to start there. Did you always have that as your opener? Did you have a little bit of fear around doing that and try something else first? How did you decide ultimately to open with the moment of the accident?
Rebecca: There were two parallel processes. Actually, they weren’t entirely parallel. So, the short answer is no, I didn’t decide immediately to start that way. When I decided I was going to write a book, I also had that immediate instinct of, well, people need to know where I’ve come from. And so I thought, “Oh, maybe there’ll be a preface or they need to know why I was up late, etc.” And then what you do is you try it on. And I kept thinking about, “Well, what do they need to know and when to care about what comes next?” And as I kept considering that, I realized there was no other place for that scene. And then when I considered it, actually when I started writing the pages that became this book, I had actually started writing them a year after the accident with no intention of writing a book, but just to get the story down to try to understand it, I wanted to record it because my life didn’t feel different, but I felt different.
And when I started writing it for myself, I started with the accident. And so when I started to write the book, I initially stepped away from that. And maybe that was not trusting my instinct, but I had to play through a lot of different versions and flip back and forth between being the reader and being the writer. And then ultimately I was like, “Yeah, actually, I had it right the first time. It has to start here.”
Marion: “My life didn’t feel different, but I felt different.” That is an extraordinary gift you’ve just given to an awful lot of people. That odd sense that I might have something to say about it was followed quickly after that, it sounds like. Or did you have to bridge something in you to project yourself to yourself as a writer?
Rebecca: I started writing the experience long before I considered writing the book. And so, I would say initially, it was a compulsion. Even in early recovery, I started writing a journal. So there was just this compulsion. And I think many of us have that to tell a story. We communicate with each other in stories. We build relationships in stories. It’s how we tell somebody else, this is who you’re dealing with and this is what we want from each other and what we can give each other. And so the compulsion to tell a story even to myself came first. So, it was a number of years of writing. And then after different teachers saw it and a couple of professionals saw it and they said, “You know what? This is a book.” And that’s where my love of a challenge and my work ethic come in. I was like, “Really? There’s a mountain to climb?”
And I wanted my life to be different too. And it was like, well, this would make it different. I will meet people, I will have conversations, I will learn. And I think the most important reason that I followed through with this is because I read many, many stories of resilience while I was recovering. It gave me hope that I just couldn’t muster myself. And so, that was an easy way of thinking, “You know what? All of our stories matter.” And so, I’m not trying to win prizes. I’m not trying to do X, Y, Z. I know my story matters because everybody else’s story mattered to me. And so, kind of pay it forward, maybe give people that hope.
Marion: Perfect answer. And by page nine, you’ve given us an exquisite, and I have to say, easy to understand picture of our neurological selves that both establishes that there will be science in this book, but nicely, that you’re going to explain it all for us, deliver only what we need and that we’re going to like it. Let’s talk about that skill.
You’re not a scientist or a medical person, per se. I know your background has a bit of that, but you’re not a doctor. This is your first book. This is not an easy assignment. I’ve written a lot about brain science. I was equipped solely with an undergraduate degree in government from a small liberal arts college when I took on my first book. In other words, I’m a believer that if you do your research, interview the right people, think it through, you can be a Sherpa for the material, the conduit for some fairly complicated matter. And that in fact, I’m going to put it out there. I think that we, the non-science writer/writers of the world, are well-equipped to do that since we know how to entertain. So, help the writers listening. What do you say to another writer who is facing the decision of whether or not to do some reporting in order to include material outside her area of expertise?
Rebecca: Everything that you said I wholeheartedly believe in. And so, I’ll just add to that answer. There’s a really important role that we all play as the owner of the body. And so many books about science are written by very caring and very innovative physicians. And they talk about the patient and they have a unique perspective and an important perspective, but we are the bodies. We own those bodies, and we have a unique and valuable perspective as well. And so that’s whether you’re writing about science, but it’s also anything that you’re writing about. So I think that there’s a fine line between pretending to have expertise that you don’t. And I did have to think very, very carefully about how much I was going to take on and where would I stop trying to learn and explain. I’ll never try to stop learning, but where would I stop trying to explain? When did I need to just say leave that to the experts?
First of all, learning is transformative in itself even if you don’t write about it. So learn. It changes us. It improves our lives even if we can’t point to exactly how. And then in writing about it, we all bring something different. So, I had to answer the question for myself. If I’m going to write the science, why should people read my version versus a scientists? First of all, I would say read both. But secondly, the fun writing challenge that I had was how am I going to tell this story? What’s the part of this science story that only I can tell? And that was actually a really helpful winnowing mechanism as well to decide what was useful and necessary. And I would start out with, well, what does fight flight have to do with me and my experience? What’s my lens? How big is the scope of it given what I went through?
And I would say every single writer has that. Also, you have the unique characteristics and circumstances of your life that causes you to see things differently. And all of these perspectives are… I’m getting chills right now. As I say, all of these perspectives are unique and fascinating, and we can learn from all of them. So, have that courage. And there might be people who tell you, “Oh, maybe you can’t,” or their own fear speaking. Don’t listen. Be respectful of what you don’t know, but also enjoy explaining your view on it.
Marion: Yeah. I agree with all of those things. And so you’ve hinted that, and let’s talk about structure. It’s the one word that makes writers drink gin straight out of the bottle, and no one likes it. I happen to love it. I teach it. I talk about it all day long. So, let’s talk about yours. Alternating chapters of the personal and science moves this story forward, but always with the knowledge we need about your gains and losses. And those gains and losses are not just in hand function by any measure. You present the science through the lens of your life. So, talk to me about your decision to alternate the chapters as such and to keep shooting from your point of view.
Rebecca: So, yeah, structure is awesome except when it’s horrible. So it’s like once you’ve cracked it, you’re like, yeah, and then every second before that is just painful. So, I knew I wanted to include the science because it was such an important part of my recovery. I didn’t want to spend all my time writing about myself, and it’s just fascinating and I loved it. So, I wanted other people to have that joy of discovery, but it was tricky figuring out how to work it in. And essentially, you have a few different choices. You can try to seamlessly integrate it in. And I kind of tried that on. It was like, “So, how’s that going to go?” The toilet exploded. And then, by the way, here’s what was going on in my brain. That doesn’t sound quite right.
Marion: Gross.
Rebecca: Or I’m not a good enough writer to do that, but it didn’t work. And then actually it was my surgeon who I’m friends with now, who gave me the idea of setting the science apart as like a lead in to a chapter. And I was like, “Hmm, what if it’s not a lead in to a chapter? Wait, I have so much to say. What if it’s actually a chapter?” And then it was a really long time. I mean, it was many months of thinking through, well, what would the topics be? How do I winnow those down? What does the shape of a science chapter look like that bridges the gap between the memoir chapters?
So, it was a very iterative process, and I had to kind of tuning guitar strings. You start at the bottom, you go all the way to the top, and then you check that it’s in tune with the bottom. So, maybe it works as alternating chapters. Then, well, what do those topics have to be? How do they fit with the memoir chapters? And I would say that was the bulk of the planning that I had to do. And I did do a synopsis of every single chapter before I started writing because it had to be that… structure had to be that strong, I think, for me to be able to then free myself to be very creative within the chapter.
Marion: Fascinating. And that memoir science mix can be a difficult one. It can be oil and water if the proportions are not right, and it can be just to drive this metaphor home, it can be a zesty salad dressing if they are right. So, where I saw you downshift and take this and proportionate correctly and reassure us is when your mother enters the book on page 30, and we look at her hands, and you bridge this divide and make it even more personal, the laying on of hands, hers to yours, to the surgeons, to us, to it just unfolds. Then you take us into a London pub where you say you’re writing at that time, and I love that. I’d be like, “Oh, I’m right there with you. I can smell the mustard from here.” And we kind of dolly around your life with you while you look at hands at work all the while explaining the interdependence of brain and hand. So, can you remember when you decided to edge your mother’s hands and the hands of the pub worker and why?
Rebecca: It would’ve been very early on. And when I was thinking about how do I write this science in a way that could only be written by me? Then the next question was always, well, what do I find fascinating about this? What does it mean to me? And sometimes, you can’t isolate yourself to that. It could become too individual or too narcissistic or something, but it was a good place to start. Why am I excited about them? And there was a lot of just sitting there and glancing eyes upward and just kind of ruminating over it. And I’ve always remembered my mother’s hands. We have the same hands, even though she insists that we don’t, “Yours are much nicer than mine.” I’m like, “They’re exactly the same.” So, it was always from a process of what do I find interesting about it? And in a meditative way, let me be in the moment. Let me be present. What comes to mind? What am I looking at?
Marion: That’s lovely. It’s a bold and wonderful decision. But I did find it incredibly reassuring in a way that there were moments in the book where you just sat me right down in the most comfortable of chairs and said, “Don’t worry, this is going to really work.” And it did. So, it’s cliche and uninformed and really kind of dreadful when someone says something like, “I’m better for what happened to me.” And it’s been a trauma and then does not really articulate how. We want to believe it’s true that we can find meaning in trauma, but we rarely get the goods on how life expanded, improved, or how one’s personal platform grew, not with you. This is a life-affirming ode to human adaptability, but it’s propelled by your personal quest for meaning and impact.
And early on in the book, there are two moments that open this portal to your wonder. One, a phone call to a classmate who had experienced a terrible trauma and foretells what awaits you in terms of self-discovery. And another, when your surgeon meets your curiosity with a book recommendation that he says, all big surgeons give their proteges, which you read, and I see as the beginning of your real change, when the joy of discovery and understanding seems to deepen your appreciation for your body. And it gives you, as you write a powerful new lens through which to perceive common human experience.
Wow. So chicken and egg, this is for us, all these things are true. You made this call to your classmate, you talked to your doctor. But about that wonder and the growth when you sat down to write, did you actually have it on you and write from there, or did you discover that while writing, we touched on this a bit a few questions ago, but was the wonder some combination of living it and writing it? How did this astonishing personal growth that you beautifully portray happen in what order?
Rebecca: I think all of it is happening all the time. So, one of the biggest takeaways I have of all of the science that I read, and I hope I communicated what I got most out of it in the book, but is everything is affecting everything all the time. Biological, psychological, social, environmental circumstances really influence what we know, how we behave, what we think, what we say and do. And so, how this transformation happened, it’s a lot of things, some of which I know, many of which I don’t know. And some of it is still happening. And there are still aspects of the experience that I’m still learning to cope with, and they get unpeeled in layers. But in terms of that wonder, it was… honestly, actually, I think I know when the wonder started.
The wonder started when I’d already had a shot of morphine at the hospital. And when the doctor asked me to look at my arm while I was doing the exercises, he asked, and I’m sitting there and I am looking at the tendons moving in my open arm, and I wasn’t in pain anymore, or at least not terrible pain. And I had that slight distance that opioids will give you in a controlled environment. And it was wondrous. It was extraordinary. You just couldn’t believe you’re doing it. And then the reading about it, the history of surgery in how it runs parallel to the history of war and dealing with my physicians who had seen so much trauma at the hospital as well, and were participating with me in my learning journey. So, I think the wonder was almost immediately accompanying my experience and my ability to see it, my ability to feel it, and for it to reassure, certainly, flickered in and out. It was a very difficult time, but it was there from the beginning.
Marion: Yeah, I remember that scene so well that you write about the morphine beautifully about what happens. And then as you look at your hand, as you look at yourself, we go into your body with you. You touched on the idea that the wonder is everywhere all the time. So here’s a question I get from writers all the time. They ask me if they have to wait until they’re done with something to write. So, help them out here. When does a writer best take on something?
Rebecca: Everyone’s answer will be different. Sometimes we have to try it and realize it’s not the right time. And there’s probably not an accident that I didn’t actually start writing this book as a public expression for over a decade after the accident, but I’m going to steal somebody else’s response. And I really wish I knew who it was, but someone said, you should write from the scar, not from the wound. I really wish I could tell you who said that, but it wasn’t me. But I do think that’s true. I was initially journaling and then I could write essays, and then I could write for a class. And then at a certain point, I think it was when I was out of the experience enough, it was not my day-to-day anymore. And that’s maybe when I could start to have observations that would make this relevant to other people.
So maybe it’s not a when, but it’s a litmus test. What kinds of thoughts can you have about it? Can you sit down and live with it in not too much pain? I think it’s probably always going to be somewhat uncomfortable writing memoir and particularly of a trauma. But there’s probably a moment when you can handle that. And there might be a time before when you know you are best off, just focusing on how you heal and writing might be part of how you heal. But planning to write a book that you will then pitch to agents and etc., that might not be the moment to start in that part of the journey.
Marion: Yeah. Well, I have to follow that up with a question I always ask when I talk to a memoir writer, and you’re, by far and away, the person to ask this question. What are we asking a memoir writer to do when we ask her to go back and look at a trauma? Are we asking her to re-inhabit it, reactivate it, judge it from here, coolly, dispassionately, relive? What are we asking of that writer, do you think?
Rebecca: I think we are asking that writer to show us another aspect of the human experience that maybe we haven’t seen ourselves or that we can’t see because we don’t have the same experience. But that also still tells us something about ourselves. So I think we’re asking them to bring us together, show us what we all share, even though you’ve come to that conclusion in a different way. So, the contents might be different, but ultimately I think what we’re looking for is communion from a memoir writer.
Marion: And when you went back and revisited it, was it re-traumatizing? You’ve talked about the wonder, you’ve talked about the discovery. There’s a lot of people that are afraid to go back in. So, I wanted to just push that a little bit and talk about how you cope with the renewed feelings, or are they cooled off by now or what, with those, the reanimation of the experience?
Rebecca: First, I think it’s very, very important to have the social support, the medical, the health professional support that you need to be dealing with a trauma. And when you’re at the point where you can write about it… well, first of all, I was writing about it during COVID, and that was really difficult. So, I live alone. England had one of the most austere and long lockdowns, so there really was no escape from the material. And I found it particularly difficult writing the chapter about psychological trauma.
And at a certain point, I realized that I was actually experiencing a lot of the feelings of loneliness and isolation and alienation and confusion that I had been feeling during recovery. And that was painful, but I suppose it was safe and just tolerable because I had been through it before and I have had therapy and I meditate and I knew to reach out to people. But in a way, I think that sort of re-experiencing it probably helped me write more vividly about it because you can remember that you had emotions, but you can’t really remember emotions, I don’t think. Same with pain. In a way, it probably helped me write about it in a more lively way. And unfortunately, all of the chapters weren’t about trauma. Some of them were so much fun to write. Nerve regeneration will blast.
Marion: Such a blast. I love that. So, another question that I get from writers all the time with the writers I work with is how to relate more than one trauma. Maybe the writer has suffered several losses or life-altering experiences, but we don’t want an autobiography of loss, per se. And you, only five years before this trauma, survived 9/11. So, talk about how you decided what to do with that reality since, from a purely writing perspective, that trauma is its own scene-stealing experience.
Rebecca: Well, there are two things. One is the litmus test, again, of which is the more, I suppose, instructive lens for me to view this, to view trauma through. And by instructive, I mean what’s going to be most relevant and compelling for the reader. So, again, starting with what’s most interesting to me. Actually the accident, it was much bigger event for me. That sounds absurd. I know. What I mean by that is 9/11, I went through with 3,000 other colleagues, and we probably talked about it nonstop for the entire next year, and then some.
So, there was a lot of what I would describe as collective healing. I didn’t have any of those feelings of alienation. I certainly had those feelings of could I ever care about anything so silly as a job again? That sort of thing. But we all went through that existential transformation together and it felt very supportive and we could help each other. And so, while that was absolutely traumatic, and my heart really goes out to people who lost a loved one, who lost livelihoods, for me, that was something where recovery felt a bit more straightforward. So, in a sense, the accident was the more life-changing event for me absurdly.
Marion: No, it makes perfect sense. And we have to make those choices. We have to, when we write memoir, curate from our own lives. And that does rather put an odd oh emphasis on some things and not others or one member of the family versus another, depending on what decisions you’re making, depending on what you’re arguing, depending on what you’re covering. So, I think it’s a very generous answer. It’s a tough thing to say though, and I really admire your ability to say it because that is what’s required when we write memoir, what are you writing about and what interests you and what are you arguing, and all of those things. So, thank you for that. I think that’s terrific. So, as we start to wrap this up, I get this question all the time, is it really possible for someone to publish a memoir as a first book? So, apparently, it is, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Apparently.
Marion: Yeah. So, if you would, talk a bit about believing in yourself or however you might define the force that got you here with a first book by a major publisher.
Rebecca: Well, first of all, I would say if you’re writing a memoir, the great thing is you can’t be an imposter of yourself. Yeah. And-
Marion: Let’s get a t-shirt that says that.
Rebecca: Exactly. Yeah. And I don’t want to brag, but I am the world-leading expert on Rebecca Davis Fogg.
Marion: Yeah. So, I hope so.
Rebecca: Yeah. Well, actually my siblings might say something different, but you can interview them. So, I think that’s having the confidence. Think about how many books have you read, how many stories have you read, how many people have you spoken to that you really enjoyed the conversation. You learned something. Well, guess what? The world needs more stories. It really does. And particularly, when you’re talking about memoir, I’ve read of all of those stories of resilience that I read that helped me get through my experience as well, some of them were just exquisitely written and some of them were very raw and some of them were experienced not. And every single one of those stories meant something to me. So, it’s the experience and your insight and your voice, I think, that are most important in memoir.
And let’s face it, we’re always going to keep learning. We’re always going to keep becoming better writers. I’ve had much more experienced writers tell me, “10 years from now, you’re going to look back at that book and say, ‘Oof, I might have done it differently.'” But that doesn’t matter because writing, you’re never finished. But at some point you have to stop with a particular work. So, have the faith that your story matters. It does. All of our stories matter, and sometimes we will tell them in print and other times we don’t.
Marion: Well, that’s just as generous as you could possibly be. Thank you, and thank you for this. I’ve so enjoyed talking with you. I literally was thrilled by the book and informed and delighted and marveled at the way you mix the science in and tell it through your eyes. So, thank you for the book. Thank you for the interview. Both of these have been a joy.
Rebecca: Oh, thank you so much for having me. This has just been absolutely wonderful. And I appreciate how much the book resonated for you. That means a lot.
Marion: Well, I think everybody should read it. The writer is Rebecca Fogg. Her book is Beautiful Trauma: An Explosion, an Obsession, and a New Lease on Life. Just out from Avery Penguin Random House. See more on her at the Penguin Random House page, follow her on Twitter. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to Qwerty. Qwerty is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey.
Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marionroach dot com, the home of The Memoir Project, where writers get their needs met through online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow Qwerty wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.
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