Last week, a woman who is renowned for being the kindest and gentlest person in my church came in to the office to drop something off. Don’t worry, we were masked up–I’d never put this beloved 80+-year-old woman in jeopardy. She took one look at me and said,
“Oh dear. Are you recovering from an accident? Are you okay?”
Her alarm seemed out of place, given that I hadn’t been in an accident and it was 9am on an average Wednesday. She pointed under her own eyes, trying to explain her concern. I laughed and said something about not sleeping well these days so I must have extra-dark circles. But she was not placated. She asked why my sleep was off.
Between COVID-19, financial losses, medical stress, adult children not able to find work and struggling to find their way, heavy weights at work, missing the kids I usually work with, compassion for friends and family (some in the WU community) who are grieving and struggling, political strife, gun violence that has invaded my quiet neighborhood, worry over the upcoming U.S. election, and not knowing when I can see my Canadian family again, why wouldn’t I have trouble sleeping?
But I was so used to not sleeping well that I forgot it could be a matter for alarm. It took a moment of tenderness from someone who hadn’t seen me in person since early March to jolt me from my cynical acceptance of my new reality. Not right away, though–it took a few days to let her concern sink in. The second she left I ran to the mirror to see whether my eyes looked that bad and pestered my loved ones about whether I looked so tired that someone could think I had two black eyes.
How about you? What have you gotten so used to that you no longer register it as a serious problem? Are the coping mechanisms you’ve adopted over the last 6 months still working? Do you brush off concern and compassion, too?
Could Your Characters Use Some Tenderness?
As writers, we can get so obsessed with putting our characters in increasingly awful situations, stripping them of their support systems, having their friends betray them, that we forget that compassion and tenderness can play a role in putting tension on every page.
- There’s the terrible false love-bombing tenderness of an abusive lover right after an explosion of violence (physical or emotional) that elicits horrible tension in the reader because we know what’s going on and how temporary it is.
- There’s the small word or act that pushes a character who is concealing their emotions to reveal their tender underbelly and let their messy feelings out.
- There’s the observation that makes your character realize the toll all this (the torturous things you’re putting them through) has taken on them.
- There’s the seemingly-out-of-the-blue understanding that an unlikely character displays for your protagonist that affects how they see themselves and either makes their task seem more possible–or more impossible.
The tenderness doesn’t need to be a sweet moment. It could be delivered in a sharp-tongued manner. In Alan Bradley’s novel series, Flavia de Luce is an 11-year-old chemistry buff and poisons expert living in a big pile of a house in 1950s rural England with her father and two older sisters. In the second book, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, her father’s sister comes to visit. Every word out of Aunt Felicity’s mouth is an insult to someone. She’s bossy, controlling, and Always Right.
One day, she takes Flavia to an isolated part of the property and tells Flavia tales of her own childhood at that house, playing with Flavia’s mother. Harriet had died the year after Flavia was born, and her older sisters had always told Flavia that she had, through being so disappointing that she’d driven Harriet to go to Tibet to escape her, killed their mother.
Aunt Felicity’s words change Flavia’s beliefs about herself in a heartbeat.
“Good heavens, child! If you want to see your mother, you have no more than to look in the glass. If you want to know her character, look inside yourself. You’re so much like her, it gives me the willies.”
And then Aunt Felicity, who is usually aggressively conventional, talks to Flavia about her passion for ferreting out information, particularly about murders:
“You must listen to your inspiration. You must let your inner vision be your Pole Star…. You must never be deflected by unpleasantness…. Although it may not be apparent to others, your duty will become as clear to you as if it were a white line painted down the middle of the road. You much follow it, Flavia…. Even when it leads to murder…. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.”
In one conversation with a sharp-tongued relative, Flavia not only has a balm to soothe some of her sisters’ cruelty but also encouragement to be exactly what she is, because those things about herself that others see as strange or inconvenient or even unseemly are things that can change the world. She takes that and runs with it through 9 more stories (and at least 9 more murders). It’s one of my favorite scenes in the series.
Could Your Creative Life Use a Little Tenderness?
Are you writing? I’m not. At least, I’m not doing any creative writing. I’m doing lots of writing for my work but not so much for myself since COVID hit.
But this coronavirus life is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. It’s not going to get better in the next few weeks, or even months. I don’t want to get so used to not writing that I forget that it isn’t the norm. I’ve tried berating myself into writing, but that hasn’t worked. Neither has organizing myself into it. So I’m trying tenderness. I’m taking inspiration from the photo at the top of this post and cradling my writing-self, going sweetly cheek-to-cheek with it and speaking gently to it. A friend (an award-winning novelist, accomplished indie publisher) hadn’t written in well over a year, but had given herself permission to dive into other creative pursuits and to keep seeing herself as a writer, and she recently started putting words on the page again. I am taking hope from her that tenderness + a little persistence will guide me back to writing, too.
In the meantime, I keep reading, stay connected to my writing community, dip into my work in progress with my imagination, and insist to myself that I am a writer, still.
Have you read an effective moment of tenderness in a novel? Have you written one? Please share.
What strategies are you using to keep your creative life going in these times?
About Natalie Hart
Natalie Hart is a writer of biblical fiction and of picture books for children who were adopted when they were older. Her father was an entrepreneur, so she never intended to be one herself, but she’s become a proud indie author. She is the author of The Giant Slayer, an imaginative retelling of the first eight years of adventure in the life of the boy who would become Israel’s King David. You can follow her on Twitter @NatalieAHart, and on Facebook.
What a lovely post, Natalie. Like you, I have found it difficult to write, have kept to my weekly blog, but sadly, ignored my novel. Reading this and reading good fiction keeps the memory of writing alive–the excitement of a sentence, the purpose of the storyline. Here is a moment of tenderness from Marilynne Robinson. I am currently reading JACk, but this I saved. I believe it’s from HOME. Thanks
The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don’t know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.
Thanks for sharing that excerpt, Beth. Robinson is one of my favorite authors, always with quiet, contemplative moments of tenderness.
What a gorgeous moment and told in Robinson’s beautiful way. Thank you so much for sharing it, Beth. And congrats on maintaining your weekly blog posts–that shows your commitment to your writing is still there.
A beautiful excerpt, full of truth and wisdom. Thank you for sharing it here.
Thank you, Kristan!
I appreciate this post and identify with it. Today is a fresh start. Mercies are new every morning.
Mercies are new every morning–thank goodness. <3
Natalie, hugs for the ongoing Covid frustration. Were it not for my kids being a few years older than yours, I’d be in the exact same position in terms of mourning their “lost” time.
I’m someone who tends to push herself relentlessly, to the point I’ve taken to writing the following quote across the top of my weekly To Do list: “I change by feeling good, not by feeling bad.” That’s from BJ Fogg, a researcher and prof who wrote a fantastic book on how to efficiently and consistently drive personal incremental change. (It’s similar to James Clear’s Atomic Habits, which is also excellent.) Self-compassion is most definitely the route to enhancing my productivity, such as it is.
As for literary tenderness, have you read Backman’s Anxious People? If not, allow me to recommend it. It reasserts the existence of a caring society and I found it a soothing balm for these times, where it seems many of us have forgotten that we’re more than a clump of people united by time and location. i.e. That society means investing in one another’s well-being.
Thank you, Jan. I haven’t read Anxious People yet, but I so loved A Man Called Ove. I’ll pick up the new one–it sounds wonderful.
This post came at a perfect time, Natalie. Thank you
Lying quietly in bed on this dark rainy morning, characters in my WIP were percolating in my mind. I was berating myself for not being able to get them on the page and wondering if I ever would feel comfortable to do so. This will be my third book and the first two took a long time to write so why, I asked myself, did I think this one should magically appear fully developed?
After reading your post, which I opened after waking from a vivid dream where I was walking through the woods with another writer friend talking about the same issue, I felt the soothing kiss on my cheek, the warm hug of forgiveness. Thank you. Creating these characters and their stories are more like fresh tea leaves seeping rather than the speed of coffee percolating in an electric pot- though, thankfully, they sometimes do bubble up to the top.
Warm forgiving hugs to you,
Linda
Thank you, Linda. I love that image of tea leaves steeping. I drink tea rather than coffee because the slower and lower release of caffeine suits me better than the bit hit of coffee. I love your observation about why you thought the process of writing your 3rd book would be any different from the previous two. The hope that things will get easier is so human <3
Love this post, Natalie! And you’ve made me want to know Aunt Felicity, who seems more than a little interesting with her shades-of-gray personality and wise words.
I’m glad you’re being kind to yourself as well. We are living in extraordinary times, and for many (most?) people paying attention, it is taking a toll. Take good care, and thank you for the encouragement!
Thank you, Therese. Aunt Felicity is a character, for sure. You alternately root for and against her, depending on what the author has let you in on. The Flavia de Luce series is one of my favorites.
Natalie, thanks for sharing these thoughts and insights. I am sending warm wishes your way. COVID has affected us all in such profound ways. We can take some solace in knowing that better days are ahead; we just don’t know when. With regard to tender moments, no specific examples come to mind in works I have read recently. In my own WIP, the main character’s older brother is something of a brute and over protective of his younger sister, but there are moments when he unexpectedly shows tenderness and compassion, and these are all the more powerful because of who he is. I wish you the best and I look forward to the day when we can all meet in person.
Yes, those moments between siblings can be so powerful. A good friend of mine still talks about the time when her much older brother, who wasn’t around much as she was growing up, and was a gruff macho guy, painted her nails for her–doing two coats, because “a lady always does two coats.”
I look forward to the day we can all see each other in person, too!
Good post. Like many here, I’m trying to push back against a cosmic storm of nonsense and get back to work. Discovering new (to me) writers helps, so thanks for telling us about Flavia.
Thank you. I like “cosmic storm of nonsense.” I’m always happy to spread the news about Flavia. The other thing I like about her series is that the author didn’t start publishing novels until he was in his 70s. There’s always hope!
Hi Natalie.
Tenderness is a worthy topic, perhaps never more so than right now, when something once so accepted as decency is now turned into a political yard sign. I would say tenderness is the opposite of brutality or callousness. There’s so much of both now that I think a good many people would not trust gestures of tenderness, that they would sense a con. But just as it took you a few beats to understand the tenderness shown to you, most skeptics would (I hope) come to appreciate and value something for which there’s no substitute.
Thank you, Barry. I do hope we humans never wipe out tenderness, although it is hard to see it these days.
Natalie, thank you for your beautiful post. It’s just what I needed to read. I had a horrible fall a couple of months ago and now facing two surgeries to get fixed up this month, the first only a couple of days away. The writing isn’t going well at all, with pain my constant companion, and anxiety coming and going at will. Please pray for me.
What a powerful scene with Flavia and her aunt. My favorite scene is from Abraham Verghese’s Cutting from Stone when Dr. Stone advises a nursing student. “Tell me, what treatment in an emergency is administered by the ear?”
The answer: Words of comfort. Don’t you just love that?
Thank you for the reminder to practice tenderness.
Oh no, Vijaya! I’m so sorry to hear about your health troubles. I’ll be thinking of you, and sending you good vibes for the surgeries and recovery!
Thank you, Vijaya. I will pray for you. I feel like all other difficult things should somehow have stopped, since COVID is bad enough, but of course that’s not how it works. That is a great exchange from Cutting From Stone–I do love it!
I will keep you in my prayers, Vijaya!
When I had eye surgery some years ago for which I had to be conscious (although the operation site was numbed for the duration of the operation – not, alas, for the recovery), I found myself stilled and comforted by Shepherd, a song by the Parachute Band based on Psalm 23. Words of comfort indeed.
It does occur to me to wonder how many people in these trying times are not in fact loving others as they love themselves, because they show others a grace and tenderness that they never think to show to themselves.
Yes, Deborah–self-compassion is a skill I keep having to learn and re-learn.
I hope you feel better soon, Vijaya! Sending many positive and healing thoughts your way. Take good care.
Thank you all so much for the good thoughts and prayers. The psalms are such a comfort, what promises! Ps. 23 is such a favorite. These past months, I’ve been singing Ps. 91–here’s an excerpt:
You shall not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that roams in darkness,
nor the devastating plague at noon.
No evil shall befall you,
nor shall affliction come near your tent.
For to His angels He has given command about you that they guard you in all your ways.
I love that Psalm, Vijaya–I’ve got the song I know based on it going through my head now, too :-)
Tenderness, mercy, grace, gentleness. Yes. I am trying so hard to grant these things to myself lately. Thank you for the reminder to grant them to my characters sometimes too.
For the last few years, I’ve been getting together with a dozen writing friends for a working writer retreat. This year, we decided to do it online. It wasn’t the same, but it was miraculous.
We had optional check-ins at 8:00 a.m., noon, and 4:00 p.m.. In between, people worked on their own, but by setting your intentions and knowing you’d be asked about them, it provided some gentle peer pressure. In the evenings we talked about our projects in the larger sense, or discussed issues we were having.
Some people wrote again for the first time in months or years. Some people realized they could fit writing into their current schedules.
We have a monthly Zoom meeting to track progress. We haven’t necessarily been working to the same extent we did that week, but people are still making progress. I think it helps to know that others are in the same boat and cheering you to succeed.
What a great way to keep working and keep your connections–I’m so glad you kept going with your retreat. I’ve found that if I embrace the attitude of “this isn’t the same as it was, but getting together in any way feels familiar, and familiar is good enough” I do better. I have a friend who I used to often meet at coffeeshops for work dates, but we haven’t been able to do that since COVID. Maybe a Zoom coffee date should be in the cards! Or they have opened up coffeeshops now in my city, so that is a possibility.