Agony or Ecstasy?

by Vinnie Hansen

Does writing make you insane or preserve your sanity? Salad Bowl Saturdays is pleased to welcome Vinnie Hansen to share her thoughts on the subject. Welcome, Vinnie! — Paula

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Writing can drive me insane. As I used to tell my students, “It’s a short drive.”

There have been so many crazed authors, who can doubt the connection? However, perhaps the authors weren’t driven mad by writing, but became authors because they were mad. I’m sure there are moments when all of us think we are out of our minds to be engaged in the pursuit. George Sand called writing “a violent and indestructible obsession.”

Vinnie in high school

 

On the other hand, just as often, writing preserved my sanity. I grew up in rural South Dakota in a poor family with ten children. My earliest writings were cathartic, bleeding-on-the-page productions, but they helped me heal. And many of the stories did go on to be published.

When I was in my thirties, my older sister—my best friend and a surrogate mother to me—struggled through chemo for breast cancer. When she eventually succumbed to the disease, writing allowed me to deal with the grief.

I’m not quite calloused enough that everything immediately becomes grist for the mill. When my father died, I cried and cried with nary a plot in my head. Eventually, though, every event is potential material. Sometimes I am aware of that even as an event occurs, and that helps me to put the occurrence into perspective.

Vinnie after 35 years of writing

With my work-in-progress I am grappling with the burglary of our house on the day before Thanksgiving, 2012. My husband and I came up the walk with our turkey as a burglar jumped over our backyard fence. My 63-year-old husband gave chase. I called 9-1-1. During the chase, the burglar twice pulled a gun and threatened to kill my husband. Fortunately, he did not. The police apprehended the criminal. The case went to trial in April, 2014, and the young man was sentenced this morning. I’ve coped with the fear, stress, and sadness by channeling it into fiction.

The Burglary

On a lighter note, fiction also allows me to see that an embarrassing moment can be funny—if framed in a story. For twenty years my husband participated in an art event called Open Studios. His studio is in our home, so during Open Studios, people would troop through our home to see his art. One year, my husband was out putting up his signs in preparation for the event. I was in the shower when I heard footsteps in the house. Dripping, I climbed out, threw on my robe, and encountered an over-eager art-loving couple padding around our living room. We were all embarrassed. But I knew it was funny. In my most recent Carol Sabala mystery, Art, Wine & Bullets, set during Santa Cruz’s Open Studios, I was able to incorporate the scene.

Writing allows us to convert tragedy and humiliation into drama and humor. What experience have you transformed via the magic of writing?

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Vinnie Hansen

Vinnie Hansen is the author of the Carol Sabala mystery series: Murder, Honey; One Tough Cookie; Rotten Dates; Tang Is Not Juice, Death with Dessert and Art, Wine & Bullets. She was a 2013 Claymore Award finalist for her upcoming Carol Sabala mystery, Black Beans & Venom. A semi-finalist for the Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction, she has written many published short stories. Her story Novel Solution will appear in the upcoming anthology Fish or Cut Bait. Vinnie lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband, abstract artist Daniel S. Friedman.