Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

Last week I wrestled with a tough emotion to portray in fiction and here's another one, grief/mourning. this might be one of the most personalized of emotions. It's freaking tidal, coming and going with whatever moon your mind is following. I think the difficulty of this emotion is just how different it can be person from person, from all the various lived experiences out there. It's not even necessarily the same within one person.

Take me for example. Within a year I lost my last two uncles (the only two I was related to by blood) and the grief hits different for both of them. Uncle S died suddenly, unexpectedly, of a heart attack. He was, without a doubt, the more gregarious of my uncles, the 'fun one.' The fourth of July last year was hard because the family always went to his lake house. Mom and I had also been at a rock/gem show the day he died and when that rolled around, neither of us wanted to return so that is a shared bit of grief that maybe in a story might not make sense.

Uncle D was the shy uncle, the introvert who really should have been helped more in school with his learning issues but that wasn't the done thing in the 50s and 60s. The first anniversary of his death is coming in the next few weeks and yet oddly there is a lack of grief when I think about it. It's not that I didn't like this uncle but it is different. Maybe it was the lack of a funeral. Maybe it was how much he pulled away almost as if afraid he had nothing to talk about with me because he wasn't 'smart enough' (no, I know he feared that.)

Even yesterday, I finally decided to stop being a jackass and answer my 3 month back log of emails/blog comments. I had at least a dozen in there that I owed spikedluv. There is so much regret in that, an emotion that doesn't go with grief alone but it is a big part of it. There is, of course, nothing I can do about that but I am determined to get the rest of the owed comments out in the next few days. I'm avoiding future regret, right? And avoidance is definitely one sign of grief.

I think in many ways, grief isn't necessarily hard to write but the way others perceive it i s where it gets sticky.

For example, I think I wrote grief well in These Haunted Hills but the book fell flat (though I did just find a great review by someone I'm not sure I know on GR) Ah well (but that's a heart break for another time)

How do you handle grief in fiction?


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86 Opportunities for Historically Underrepresented Writers (February 2026) many of these include LGBT and women in general





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Comments

[shipperslist]

How do you handle grief in fiction?

I write it out. I've written out my secondary infertility and miscarriage, and the loss of my dog, and the fright of losing my father. I have the actual loss of my father to write out still, but I have the frame for it waiting.

One of the best depictions of grief that I've read was Nghi Vo's The City in Glass. I cried so many times reading it.

[cornerofmadness]

that is definitely a way to handle it. I do some of that myself. Those are big weighty terrible things you're writing out there.

I have that book on my tbr pile

[shipperslist]

To be honest, I didn't realize I was writing out the infertility stuff until what I consider the third part of the triptych and then I had to sit down for a moment and have A Think.

[cornerofmadness]

I can only imagine

[shanachie_quill]

Pretty sure I have some unanswered comments to Spikedluv also. Not sure what I'll do about it.

[cornerofmadness]

I'll probably keep some, delete the rest because at the end of the day I'm not sure what else to do

[e_k_braveman]

"How do you handle grief in fiction?"

Writing fiction? Honestly, I tend to actively avoid it because other wise I have to face my own greif, and I'm just not at a point in my life wherever I can really do that. Enjoying someone else's fiction? Cry for an hour, praise the work to the high heavens and then avoid it for years. So yeah, in short, avoid it but with a painful self-awareness about it.

"This mag pays well BUT you have to subscribe which is free but if you get a paid sub your pay as an author goes up and that, while I understand it, doesn't necessarily sit well with me."

Not accusing anyone if anything, and I don't really know how this stuff usually works, but that feels like it's somewhere on a spectrum that alao contains money laundering and pyramid schemes lol.

[cornerofmadness]

Definitely when writing grief, you are likely to hit wells of your own.

there are pyramid schemes in publishing to be sure (a lot of the vanity press that morphed into helping self pubeers)

In this case they're trying to pay pro rates which is a lot so I get why they're doing it but also I don't really care for the model

[barbaratp]

Já escrevi sobre o luto quando perdi meu pai. Foi dolorosamente triste. Na época eu estava fazendo uma obra inspirada em muito no casamento dele com minha mãe. Com seu falecimento me afastei muito da escrita e quando voltei fiz uma obra sobre um jovem que perdera o pai e caiu em profunda depressão. Ele era eu personificado em um personagem que pôde recomeçar a vida e ser feliz (diferentemente de mim naquela época). Anos depois fiz o mesmo, abordando outro personagem e a morte de um pai.

Confesso que em ambos os casos não aprofundei a dor do luto em si, mas mostrei como ele moldou aquelas pessoas, como ele trouxe agonia e tristeza, doença e por fim a saudade muito grande.

Até hoje sinto falta dele, e às vezes sinto como se ele fosse aparecer na porta, sonho muito com a morte dele tendo sido mentira e com uma vida diferente onde ele viveu. E sinto ressentimento por tudo que não fiz.

Hoje mesmo senti isso novamente quando li sobre spikedluv. Eu chorei muito pensando que se tivesse estado online, participado dos desafios que tínhamos em comum ou ao menos entrado em seu perfil teria tido a chance de conversar com ela mais uma vez. Falar sobre gatos ou da vida doméstica. Rir de alguma bobagem ou comentar em alguma fic. Agora vai ser tudo lembrança do que fiz e daquilo que não fiz.

As últimas notificações no e-mail sobre as atualizações dela online sempre vão men fazer pensar que eu só queria ter podido dizer que eu gostava muito da pessoa dela. E que ver suas postagens me fazia muito feliz. Sinto por não ter feito isso uma última vez.

E quero quiçá não deixar mais nada pra depois, mas sinto que não importa quantas vidas eu viva, a gente nunca vai conseguir dizer a todos que a gente ama ou quer bem aquelas pessoas até que seja tarde demais.

Então me desculpa se não disse isso antes, mas é muito bom ter você online, ver seus pensamentos e poder falar contigo aqui. Minhas condolências pela perda dos seus tios e da nossa pessoa em comum.

[cornerofmadness]

Dealing with the death of a parent is a deep well of emotion and a few others on here did things similar to you when it comes to writing it out.

I would imagine the great longing is a very real and important part of grief. Those regrets of what we didn't do have such deep impacts as well

Same with Spikeluv we all have our regrets like me with all the unresponded to messages in my inbox. Like you I'll carry those regrets about not telling her how much I appreciated hearing from her

I think the way the human brain works, that feeling of I didn't tell them everything I needed to, that depressive feelings, is always going to be a part of it. The brain makes quicker and stronger connections with negative emotions (in theory as a way to train itself not to make those same mistakes again)


And no worries. I'm not good at this either. Thanks for the condolences and I enjoy seeing you around online too.

[barbaratp]

I think the way the human brain works, that feeling of I didn't tell them everything I needed to, that depressive feelings, is always going to be a part of it. The brain makes quicker and stronger connections with negative emotions (in theory as a way to train itself not to make those same mistakes again)

Concordo em gênero, número e grau. Isso explica muitíssimo porque infelizmente na maioria das vezes nossas boas memórias tem dificuldade em se lembradas, nosso cérebro gosta de persistir no erro afim de não o fazermos de novo e esquece de quando não erramos e fomos feliz.

[cornerofmadness]

yes from the research I've done this is true