On a personal note..
Why I write what I write
The first slogan I used on my writer's website was: “I have been writing since I could hold a pen and I will write till my dying day.” Writing has always been more than a passion; it has been a lifeline.
So how come, you may think, it took me over fifty-five years to become a published author and sixty-five years until I could call myself a full time author? The answer is simple: like so many of my fellow authors I held the deep conviction that my writing wasn’t good enough for publication.
Always an avid reader I could see the fallacy of my belief about my own work – as it was up to standard. But if there’s one common trait among authors, even the most-praised, bestselling authors, it is that our work ‘just isn’t good enough’. The impostor syndrome is rampant among all creatives, and so also among authors.
Yet, the other side of the coin is as resilient. I can’t live without writing. Let me tell you how I found out this truth about myself.
For decades I suppressed my longing to return to my first love, penning stories, as I went through life being an obedient citizen, doing the job, raising the kids, looking after an ageing mother, forcefully silencing the characters in my head that wanted to jump onto the page.
Later, later, later! I told myself, seeing the time ticking away and author friends climbing the charts.
And then on a spring morning in 2014 my life stopped. My heart broke and nothing made sense anymore. I lost my beloved daughter Joy at the age of 29 after her heroic fight against cancer.
In the midst of this unbearable pain, writing became my lifeline. Broken words on the page, tears, devastation, unbelief, horror and so much pain. Diary entries, shards of poems, deep, angry prayers to God to make it undone, to turn back time, to make me, my family, our lives whole again.
It didn’t happen. Another child, my second, became seriously ill with another form of cancer only three months later. He too walked along the narrow edge of death but escaped for a while. Still here, still…
Then three years later my sister passed, my mother passed. The dog, the cat. The 2010s for me were the decade of doom. Death was destroying the very fabric of my life.
And yet, through it all, the words were like small anchors. They told me I still existed. Somewhere deep inside there was still a well of words.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. That’s how it felt to me. If I had to make peace with my God over the loss of my child and all my other losses, I had to write. Not about Joy, not about myself, but about the deep, scarred and scary emotions that make us human. That makes us carry on when we don’t want to carry on anymore. When all we can see is darkness and despair. To hang on to that one grain of fighting force and faith that still simmers within us.
Do you now understand why I write about Resistance women in WW2? They fought, they lost, they scrambled to their feet again, they found love and made peace with their fate. All my heroines will go through the darkness to the light, whether they survive or not. And thus, my own experience has found itself onto the pages of my novels. As one reader so poignantly said, “Your description of grief and love are so overwhelmingly profound.”
I cannot write otherwise.
On 16 July 2024 the final book in The Resistance Girl Series sees the light. Forty years earlier, on 16 July 1984, I gave birth to a perfect little girl named Joy Sareeta. The sun rose in the summer sky and the larks sang at the top of their lungs. I cried with happiness on the day I became a mother.
On 16 July 2024 I’ll be thankful for the words on the page and the books I published. I will write till my dying day.
Hannah Byron
