Write what you know: Identity and creativity

‘Write what you know’ is said for a reason, even if people often take it too literally.

In Coldharbour, I have written what I know, even though I don’t regularly raise the Dead or have brought a house down around me with a click of my fingers.

Because I do know what it’s like to feel like I don’t belong just because of who or what I am and I am the sum of my experiences which, still to this day, draw me to outsiders and introverts.

We’re not like them

‘We’re not like them’ was what my late father used to say. He said it as a point of pride, but I took it as something to be afraid of. I was an extremely sensitive child with a whole variety of neurodivergences, some officially diagnosed, others just hinted at because I was ‘high-functioning’ enough and dealing with the actual confirmed diagnoses was difficult as it was. I was also the baby of the family, ten years younger than my sibling and twenty years younger than my closest cousins. I did have friends but I had no idea how to navigate these relationships while also being a playground bully’s dream – especially when I spent long periods of my formative years struggling to even speak.

Literature was where I retreated when verbal communication became, frustratingly often, almost impossible. I read voraciously and started creating stories and poems and plays, expressing everything I wanted to in an accessible form (I’m a truly terrible artist so drawing really wasn’t an option). I was extremely lucky that I had parents and teachers who were willing to encourage me and read all of my ridiculous things that I put in front of them over the years, which culminated in asking my mum to read the opening chapter of Coldharbour 18 months ago to confirm that it wasn’t (in my words) ‘a pile of shit that I’ve been wasting my life on’.

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a pity party, more of an explanation of where my love of and need for writing comes from. Over the years, I’ve wondered if I would’ve changed those years of childhood anxiety and teenage angst, but knowing that I would probably lose what is probably the greatest love of my life, I don’t think I would.

I recently watched a conversation between two of my favourite actors, Sebastian Stan and Colman Domingo, who faced similar challenges growing up (Stan moved to the States at 12, having spoken Romanian as his first language; Domingo had a speech impediment as a child). Both self-confessed introverts, they agreed that they probably wouldn’t be so creative or so willing to push themselves out of their comfort zones if they hadn’t experienced these situations as children. I agree with them, because I do appreciate now that what goes on in my mind is a bit weird and different (which is sometimes useful, sometimes not), which is the point I think my father had been trying to make all along.

The inadvertent box ticker

There were other ways in which I, and by extension, my family, was different – some of which were obvious at the time, others, again more hinted at.

Growing up in what was a predominantly very white and semi-rural part of the South East in the 1990s, when my parents had grown up in the very multicultural Notting Hill, was…

Actually, it was alright.

I never experienced the overt racism my mum had in Fifties and Sixties London; it was just very obvious I was different in that ‘ethnically ambiguous’ way that you get when your heritage is a mix of Black, Jewish, and Irish (there is some English thrown in there somewhere). We’re talking having the most unmanageable hair in the playground, a strong eyebrow game, and generally being an all-round short-arse (I’ve finally reached the dizzying heights of 5’3” – three inches taller than my mother and my aunts).

Even in the house, we were different from my friends’ families too. My parents’ Motown records were on constant rotation, we had so many books the cases bowed, and my father had a connoisseur’s passion for unpronounceable meat products from vague parts of Central Europe. We also had German TV channels and spoke bits of both that and Yiddish among the English, while my Mum’s drawers would be full of Dark & Lovely.

I then just had to go and come out when I was fourteen, so it takes me a while to fill in forms online.

Boxes to tick.

A political act

I like to just think I’m living my life. However, I’m also aware more than ever in this wonderful world in which we are trying to live said lives, that:

I am openly Queer and my identity is still evolving and might always evolve;

I am mixed-race and my background is culturally Jewish, even if we left the religious side a few generations back (we kept on marrying Catholics and we’re not big on organised anything);

I was assigned female at birth and this is a time when misogyny and incel culture is forever on the rise.

I also believe that representation is vital and that’s not just me personally standing up and saying who I am – it’s also in the characters I create and the stories I tell too. Coldharbour could be described as ‘diverse’ or as ‘woke’, but it’s just my life. It is literally just me writing what I know. The Wilde family are of colour because guess what? I am too. There are Jewish characters. There are Irish characters. There are Black characters. The protagonist is a bisexual single mother who falls in love with a lesbian badass, her brother’s a biromantic asexual (he’s also a misanthrope, but there you go), and I’m not sure I’d describe any of the characters as particularly neurotypical.

Half of them also have magical Powers that can raise the Dead or bring down houses.

Write what you know, I guess.