Why I Keep Writing Depressing Stories
Just a little note to start - would be incredibly chuffed if you signed up to receive these Letters from Lauren in your email inbox. It’s totally free. And will get you thinking about all the things you may or may not be pondering yourself.
This week, I took stock of the last two years of doing freelance journalism. I started freelancing on a total whim. Someone said I wrote well and asked if I had ever considered writing for payment. The thought had never occurred to me. But I thought I’d give it a go and here we are.
I have tried, desperately tried, to get editors to let me write ‘light’ topics. And occasionally, I’ll get the chance. Recently I got to talk to the voice of Daddy Pig – fun, light. Once I wrote about cold-water swimming – one of my very favourite things to do and talk about.
But for the most part, I can’t seem to form stories around anything other than quite depressing stuff. People traumatised by war. Women escaping abuse. Sex workers begging for their rights. People in prison living in total depravity. Asylum seekers treated as second-class. Those sorts of stories.
I suppose it is what I know. For two years, I worked as a support worker in a domestic abuse team. And for the last five years, I’ve helped to run a befriending project for survivors of modern slavery. Even outside of work, justice and lack of it, is what I see constantly. Unescapable. So it’s what I write.
But unfortunately, it also makes me a bit of a ‘debbie downer’ – the one who brings up the impact of climate change on the most vulnerable or how the Nationalities and Border Act is going to actually criminalise asylum seekers for trying to get to the UK.
I’m that person.
Occasionally, when I hear people talk about turning off the news, I’m tempted. Tempted to unsubscribe from newsletters. Delete my Reuters news app. Switch off BBC Radio 4.
This person did. Hasn’t watched or followed the news for six years. Said that the world keeps spinning and you watching the news (the way you will learn what is happening outside of your bubble) doesn’t change it.
But I can’t. I can’t stop listening to and reading about what is happening around the world. And I can’t stop writing about it.
Sure, me watching the news (and writing about it) doesn’t change the world, no necessarily. But it changes me.
It takes me out of my world and reminds me there is more going on than me, my work, my family, my drama.
When I talked to a young Ukrainian woman recently, I listened to her story of escape. How she left her husband, parents, friends, and home to flee to the UK with her children. That same day, I was in a funk. A funk I couldn’t quite put my finger on. My kids were crawling on me. I was having an existential crisis about the future. Had made mistakes in work.
But as I listened to this woman who had gone through hell, and then subsequently, wrote her story, something in me changed.
Perspective. I got perspective. Snapped out of that funk by gratefulness and compassion. But it isn’t just perspective I get.
Learning about the world and all that is going on in it propels change (okay so maybe I can’t change the whole world like that person who didn’t watch the news said. But one person can and often does, make a difference. Even just loving and caring for one human being or one issue in the world is worth gold). It dispels untruth. Challenges opinion. Breeds empathy. Creates critical thinking.
So as much as I’d like to shut off people’s pain, I won’t. I may need to take breaks when anxiety is particularly high. When I’m utterly exhausted. But for the most part, you’ll keep finding me on social media, posting the latest articles I’ve written and read, and sharing what I’ve listened to on podcasts. Will keep being the one who talks about ‘don’t go there’ topics at all the wrong times.
But do you know what I notice, listening to accounts of people’s lives? Amidst the darkness this world seems to constantly pump out, there is light too. There are good people out there doing good things in the middle of all the bad. Even in some of the bleakest narratives I have written, there are glimmers of goodness woven into their stories, even if only thin strands.
For instance, a few weeks back, I was writing a story about the protests in Sri Lanka. Recently Sri Lanka has descended into economic ruin and thousands were protesting a corrupt government that has left its people desperate on every level (they don’t have fuel to cook, schools are all closed, food is short, transport is halted, etc). Even in the middle of all that, there is a community kitchen running that is pulling every resource to provide warm meals for citizens. There’s that glimmer.
And that’s what I’m always looking for, hoping for, when I read and when I write. That in the darkness, light will still be there, somewhere.