How to Write Your Book

(Advice for Survivors)

Why?

Write it for yourself because all parts of you need and deserve to be heard. A good therapist is essential but it can take a while to find and time to build up trust and sessions aren’t every day … all the while, paper and pen are at hand, ready to absorb your pain. The sooner you get the poison of abuse out of you, the better.

A lot of research has established the psychological and physical benefits of writing (links at the endⁱ). This is not journaling, it’s reconstructing a narrative, it’s figuring out your timeline, it’s linking together cause-and-effect and seeing yourself from the outside as the innocent child you were. A regular writing habit helps your subconscious connect to parts of yourself that may be locked away. For me, regular writing caused the biggest part of my healing.

Share your story for others. Onlookers are learning the truth and the more testimonies they read, the more they can understand that organised abuse and SRA are not pretend. And it's a complicated area, readers need different accounts to begin to understand the breadth and complexity of what goes on.

Other survivors need you, too. Someone may recognise aspects of their own experiences in yours, it may help them feel less alone or give them language for experiences they’ve struggled to describe. They need to see that you’ve survived so they know they can too. Survivors need to find those with similar or comparable experiences to help integrate their own traumas. You are their hope, their example, the shining light in their dark.

That said, you don’t have to share anything. These are your experiences, this is your life and you can share or not share, when and if you feel ready. You’ve already been through enough and no genuine survivor will ever judge you; survival is insight + healing = compassion.

How?

Make ‘May Something True Come Through Me’ your mantra and don't make the story more certain than your memory is. My own first memoir has time gaps but I'm okay with that. Writing is a place to record what you remember you experienced.

You can even include what you believe, what you were told, what you have later discovered and what you are uncertain about as long as you make it clear to the reader which is which. You don't have to resolve those questions before you begin but don't fill gaps because you feel a story needs it, “I don't remember the rest” is a valid sentence, as is “I'm not sure.” It’s all relevant and doesn’t lessen your testimony.

The best writing doesn’t make judgements. Don’t condemn yourself for the things you did or for the choices you made, it will only hinder your progress. Don’t feel you need explain your actions and, of course, definitely don’t lie. Tell it pure, dispassionately and fully. The truth will find readers, truth speaks for itself and explains everything. There’s no need to force the reader to feel; truth is strong and their emotions will follow. Don’t judge anything, not yourself, the world or your writing. Just tell the facts of what happened as honestly as you can, one sentence at a time.

Where should I start?

If you’re an SRA survivor and like me, you might not know enough about your timeline to know what came first so this question will answer itself.

Start with what you remember; a look, an event, something someone said or whatever feels important. Some things will be easier to write than others so don’t force it, write what you can and then step back as long as you need, to process and recover.

As you write, you may notice connections between memories, places, people and events that you hadn't thought about for years. You might want to rearrange your written sections later; what you write first might not be the start of the book or your story and that’s okay. Trust the process. You’re not judging, remember?

But I don’t know grammar and all that stuff...?

Neither do a lot of people. Every voice matters in the SRA disclosure movement and where one reader might connect with my voice and writing style, another might prefer yours. You don’t have to format it professionally. You don’t need a degree or any fancy words, the important thing is that we get our stories out there. One. Word. At. A. Time.

At the time of writing this article, Wikipedia claims there are over 12,000 (unsubstantiated) cases of SRA. I believe that’s the tip of an iceberg. Imagine how many more survivors aren’t being recognised, aren’t yet able to speak out, aren’t yet being heard. Let’s make individual experiences visible, let’s preserve survivors testimony, let’s make the numbers too big to ignore.

Tell the world what happened.

I don’t have much time and I’m always tired

There’s no deadline. Start with a tiny amount of time, set an alarm and write for five minutes, or ten or half an hour. Write in your lunch-break or when you wake up. It doesn’t have to be good (no judging!) One sentence a day, every day, is eventually a 90,000 word memoir, just keep going.

Once you’re writing, you’ll know you’re doing something important, you’ll feel your mind mending and your self-esteem will rise. All this will support your overall healing and help you to keep going. Keep going.

Style tips

Biggest thing I learned on my masters degree was this: no-one gets to tell you what is good or bad writing. There’s a place for every writing style; science style reports, poetic prose, investigative journalistic styles, regional dialects, there are successful books written without the letter ‘e’ⁱⁱ, there are others made only of text messages ⁱⁱⁱ. You can’t do writing wrong.

If you want to give any section more impact, there are a few things you can try:

• take out descriptive adverbs, beautifully, scarily, slowly; they usually add nothing.

• Don’t tell readers that a person is diabolical because their actions will already show it.

• Read what you’ve written aloud to hear how it sounds. You’ll spot mistakes but the biggest benefit is that all parts of you can listen and learn.

Be kind to yourself

When I was first writing, self-sabotaging parts of me would afterwards destroy it. They were doing what they thought best to keep me safe but A LOT of work was lost that way. If this happens to you, be kind to yourself and them. I handled it by;

• grieving what was lost

• explaining to those parts why it wasn't helpful

• suggesting other roles for those parts that would be genuinely helpful

• explaining how the more I was able to share all parts of my experience with myself, the better informed I was and the more capable of protecting myself I would become

• reassuring myself that, at this stage, the writing was just for me and didn't have to be shared unless and until it felt okay to all parts to share it and

• writing again. Maybe something less triggering. I found I could always circle back when I was in more agreement.

You could also try saving backups in multiple places, on a USB stick, printed out, saved in email drafts or posted to yourself or in any other way you can think of. It might work, it really depends how informed, efficient and determined those other parts of you are!

Other Options

• You could make one or many videos of yourself telling your story to your mobile phone camera and post it on YouTube, Rumble, Vimeo or anther video platform.

• You could record speech on your phone and let someone else—a typist or an editor or an AI transcriber, turn the recordings into text.

• You could hire a professional Ghost Writer, tell them your story and they turn it into a traditionally finished manuscript for you.

• You could make, paint or draw your experiences as art; a graphic novel, a series of paintings, models or anime.

• You could write it as a play. Perhaps distancing yourself from the action will be easier for you.

• You could have someone interview you, on your own podcast or someone else’s or just at home with a trusted person. Let them ask you questions, for example, "When was it?" “What happened next?” “What did the room look like?” “Who was there?” “What did you think at the time?” “What do you remember most vividly?” “When did you realise something had changed?”

• You could collect and publish:

  • lists

  • memories

  • diary entries

  • overheard conversations

  • pictures drawn in childhood

  • descriptions of places

  • things people said

  • photographs with captions

  • letters you received or never sent

  • recipes

  • shopping lists

  • death certificates

  • postcards

  • text messages

  • important dates

  • school or medical reports

  • Post-it notes

  • maps

  • timelines

  • newspaper clippings

  • scraps of poetry

• You could make a scrapbook of photographs, small objects, handwriting and captions.

• You could write articles about aspects of your experience or healing.

• If you can write at all, you can write you story in a different style. What follows isn't polished narrative, it's an example of stream-of-consciousness and it’s powerful:

  
  

Tuesday

Mum's blue coat.

Rain.

The smell of the hospital. Don't remember what she said.

Actually, I do...

My point is, you don't need to become a writer to write your book or share your story, you already have the skills. Start with what you’re good at. If it's talking, let yourself talk and record it for other survivors and future generations. If it's seeing, let yourself photograph. If it’s drawing, draw it. If it's collecting, collect the fragments. If it's conversation, let someone interview you. If it's making objects, let the objects tell the story. Your eventual book could be presented as an archive of your life; you don’t have to write a conventional memoir. All of these activities give you another way to process your experiences.

Be true to yourself, but as soon as you feel ready and able, I urge you; join the SRA disclosure movement and share you story. Full disclosure helps us all. I believe you can.

See you out there,

Jen 💜

i About the benefits of finding the narrative around your experiences:

• Pennebaker, J. W. & Smyth J.M, Guildford Press (2016) Opening Up by Writing It Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1521/jj.41115338?ut

• Esterling, B. A., Antoni, M. H., Kumar, M., & Schneiderman, N. (1990). Emotional repression, stress disclosure responses, and Epstein-Barr viral capsid antigen titers. Psychosomatic Medicine.

  
  

• Adler, J. M., Lodi-Smith, J., Philippe, F. L., & Houle, I. (2016). The incremental validity of narrative identity in predicting well-being: A review of the field and recommendations for the future. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 20(2), 142–175. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868315585068.

  
  

• Lindemann, H. (2001). Damaged identities, narrative repair. Cornell University Press.

  
  

• Esterling, B. A., L’Abate, L., Murray, E. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1999). Empirical foundations for writing in prevention and psychotherapy: Mental and physical health outcomes. Clinical Psychology Review, 19(1), 79–96.

  
  

• Murray, E. J., & Segal, D. L. (1994). Emotional processing in vocal and written expression of feelings about traumatic experiences. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 7, 391–405.

  
  

• Cheng, K. C.-L. (2024). Self-narrative, affective identification, and personal well-being. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 10(1), 79–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2022.39.

  
  

• Guo, L. (2023). The delayed, durable effect of expressive writing on depression, anxiety and stress: A meta-analytic review of studies with long-term follow-ups. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(1), 272–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjc.12408

  
  

• L’Abate, L. (Ed.). (2000). Distance Writing and Computer-Assisted Interventions in Psychiatry and Mental Health. Westport, CT: Praeger.

  
  

• Pennebaker, J. W. & Seagal, J. D. (1999), Forming a Story: The Health Benefits of Narrative.

  
  

• Pennebaker, J. W. (1993), Putting Stress into Words: Health, Linguistic, and Therapeutic Implications. 

  
  

• King, L. & Miner, K.  Writing about the Perceived Benefits of Traumatic Events: Implications for Physical Health (2000)

  
  

• McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622.

  
  

• Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.95.3.274.

ii Here are some famous examples of books written without the letter e:

• Gadsby — Ernest Vincent Wright (1939) A 50,000-word novel written without using the letter e. Probably the most famous English example.

• A Void — Georges Perec (1969)

• La Disparition - A French novel written without the letter e, despite e being the most common letter in French. The English translation by Gilbert Adair also avoids e.

• Les Revenentes — Georges Perec (1972) Perec reverses the constraint and only uses the vowel e.

iii Successful books entirely or predominantly written as messages, post-its or e-mails:

• e — Matt Beaumont (2000) A full-length comic novel consisting entirely of emails exchanged among employees of an advertising agency. It is a particularly good example of how an unconventional format can still sustain multiple characters, plots and subplots. Beaumont later wrote e², which incorporates text messaging as well.

• The Boy Next Door — Meg Cabot (2002) Told through emails, with the story unfolding entirely through electronic correspondence. It was part of Cabot's early experiments with the electronic epistolary novel.

• Text Me When You're Home... — Bryce Benekos & Justin Swindle (2010) The authors told the relationship story entirely through text messages.

• Life on the Refrigerator Door — Alice Kuipers (2007) The story of a mother and daughter is told through notes they leave for one another on the fridge door. It's short, but it demonstrates how much emotional narrative can be compressed into tiny fragments.

• Almost Like Being in Love — Steve Kluger (2004) It uses diary entries, newspaper clippings, office documents, letters, emails, menus, post-it notes and checklists with relatively little conventional narration.

• Last Days of Summer — Steve Kluger (1998) Told through letters, postcards, newspaper clippings and progress reports, among other things. The form is part of the emotional relationship between the characters.