The scary birth story of Possessed
An excerpt from my book Unshaming on the eve of my last novel's publication anniversary
If there is anything that’s a natural high for me, it is a culmination of years or months of work and seeing my work published, having tangible evidence that all the mundane sacrifices of time and effort and anxiety and self-doubt are for something after all. It takes me a few months to write a book, but it takes years to see it out in print — if at all. It’s a cliche but it’s no exaggeration when artists compare their projects to children: demanding, ever-absorbing, delightful and terrible at the same time, spine-breaking and impossible to push out into the world but once pushed out, absolutely miraculous and proud-making. As it is with children, here’s the evidence of something that came out of me, a thing that originated out of nothing, a thought, a dream, a sentence.
From the beginning, Possessed proves to be my most demanding, difficult child, the gestation of it full of problems and by the time it is launched, my emotional exhaustion is similar to my physical exhaustion when I was in labour with my son for more than 20 hours, that ended with an emergency C-section and both of us nearly dying. I have been able to finish it (the book’s birth) but not before pissing everyone off and turning my nice-to-work-with reputation into a dumpster fire.
But the book is finally finished. Except my author copies get sent to the wrong address and […] — in other words, there is nothing aligned in the stars that would indicate this is going to be a successful endeavour. On the day of the launch I am clueless about the fact that book hasn’t been distributed so I show up like a delusional self-published maverick in various book stores across the city ready to sign it, only to be finally, gently told by a teenage goth at a big bookstore, that it is perhaps in the boxes that haven’t been opened yet. The way she looks at me is concerning but I smile as brightly as I can and tell her I will be back to which she nods with visible relief that I am leaving. I wonder if I have imagined the past six years, if I am maybe in some sort of elaborate long-term psychosis where I believe I write books and people buy them but in reality I am sitting in a barred window in paper slippers and a gown tied in the back, looking at a tree.
Friends are calling and writing to ask if I am happy about the launch and they write to ask where they can buy my book. Sometimes I get into elaborate explanations trying to summarize the events, but sometimes, I am so mortified my whole body and my face gets hot as the blush creeps from that tiny, fragile pulsing core every artist has inside their heart. The tiny, pulsing core that is both the most beautiful and the ugliest, a place that’s more intimate than a lover’s touch, and more authentic than a dream come true. This is the place where I germinate those words and sentences before I become pregnant with them, before I release them to be looked at, marveled at and poked at, ridiculed too.
This is a risk every artist takes, every caretaker too when they raise something, teach it and shape it and show it. I believe writing — or painting or dancing, etc. — is a job like any other and we are not more special than the people who don’t constantly reach into their cores for a living. But the same that sensitivity some of us have that allow us to show you something that makes you feel, doesn’t get to punch out at the end of the day. A thing of yours that you care for that is not doing well seems to only create problems that bring on a special kind of new Shame — some sort of surrogate Shame. In this case, this is the Shame I feel when this thing I created, loved, and raised fails to thrive, an entity that does something very stupid or is just so fucking ugly you’re hardly surprised everyone else hates it too.
There is a body of research that explores "vicarious shame," which refers to experiencing shame or embarrassment on behalf of someone else. This emotional response can occur when we witness or are associated with someone else's actions, behaviours, or situations that evoke Shame. I wonder if this proxy Shame I’m experiencing about Possessed is closest to the research on interpersonal relationships that has examined how people feel mortified on behalf of their close friends, family members, or romantic partners when they witness these loved ones experiencing embarrassment or social humiliation.
Is Possessed’s failure to launch well a little bit like watching your talented and full of promise kid get disqualified from making a soccer team?
Or is it closer to the feelings we have when we observe someone else's failure or public humiliation, someone we deeply associate with?1
Possessed is possessed. The day of the launch party, I also receive a letter — scheduled to arrive on the publication date — from a lawyer threatening me with a lawsuit by a former lover who has decided that he is the subject of the book, without having read it. We are no longer talking but when we talked, I admitted to having been somewhat inspired by our tumultuous affair and after spurring his most recent advances, the letter seems like a last-ditch attempt at connecting with me — if we can’t be lovers, maybe we can be enemies? I open the email during a break at school, as my journalism students work on writing a scene and as another professor sits in the corner writing an evaluation of my lecture. I thought my evaluation was going to be the most stressful thing that day but I was wrong. I murmur under my breath: I’m okay! This is fine, and I think of a famous meme of a dog having tea while his house is on fire.
You can now find Possessed in some bookstores and definitely online where they sell books. Buy it. Despite all that I just told you, I am proud of it and think it’s a good book.
One study that investigated this "Vicarious Shame and Guilt" by Schnall, S. (2011) explored the phenomenon of vicarious shame and guilt, and aimed to understand the underlying mechanisms and emotional responses involved in experiencing these emotions by proxy. The study’s participants were presented with written scenarios that described various situations involving someone they were associated with (e.g., family member, or colleague) committing an embarrassing or morally questionable act. After reading each scenario, participants were asked to rate the degree of vicarious shame and guilt they experienced on behalf of the person in the scenario. The study also examined factors that might influence the intensity of these emotions, such as the level of closeness to the person involved and the severity of the act committed.
The study found that participants indeed experienced vicarious shame and guilt when they imagined someone they were associated with committing an embarrassing or morally questionable act. The intensity of these emotions was influenced by the level of closeness to the person involved and the perceived severity of the transgression. Although the experiment was designed to shed light on the interpersonal nature of shame and guilt, it was also an important study that showed how empathy and social connections can play a role in influencing the emotional experiences of shame and guilt.
I felt awful about Possessed – I still do, in fact. I feel awful for having such terrible associations with it that I too joined the imaginary mob who wished and caused it to fail. I’ve given up on self-promoting it the way I most authors are expected to promote their books shamelessly and unapologetically these days. I look at that cover and she is not my beautiful, anticipated daughter anymore – she smells eyes-wateringly badly of B.O. and she has cystic acne and she wants to hug me and I fucking can’t. People are watching. And the less I want to hug her, the worse she will probably fail.