My Novel’s Labour Pains

My second novel, THE RUBBER FENCE, general fiction, will be published on March 3^rd.  It’s the baby who didn’t want to come out for the longest time. My novel’s labour pains were hard and went on too long. I initially wrote the story as a screenplay back in the 1990s, had agents for it, but though it had a fair amount of interest, it was not picked up.

Inspired By My Work

How many of you have stories that won’t let go? THE RUBBER FENCE is one of these. Perhaps mine took a while because it was a little personal. It was inspired by my work as a social worker on a psychiatric ward at the Winnipeg General Hospital in 1972, a time when feminism was just rearing its lovely head.

I had just graduated with a Master of Social Work and was gung ho to put into practice what I had studied. I had been fortunate to have as my ‘guru’ on campus, Dr. Gerry Erickson, who had come to the University of Manitoba from a Wisconsin mental health centre, where he had been a family therapist for ten years. With him as my mentor, I read every article and book published on family communication at that time. I watched videotapes of well-known therapists interviewing families and conducted a number on my own in front of a one-way mirror.

A Joe Job

I showed up for my first day of work on the psych. ward, eager to do family therapy but naïve. I hadn’t understood that I’d been hired to replace a social worker who had acted as more or less a grunt (someone who has no formal training or skills and does joe jobs). The psychiatric team expected me to arrange taxis for patients who were leaving or needed help with placement in the community. These are valuable and necessary tasks but I had been trained to work with families on the emotional problems they presented. The day hadn’t yet come when a social worker’s training was valued.

ECT, Alive and Well

Also, I didn’t know that electro-convulsive therapy, ECT, was still being practiced on this psychiatric ward. I’d seen One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, I’d even read the book. And the whole idea of ECT horrified me, just as it had the author, Ken Kesey.

The psychiatric ward at the Winnipeg General Hospital was run by psychiatrists who knew that the faster you got patients out, the more money you saved. So, shock treatment and drugs were the favoured treatments. Quick fixes that sometimes made sense, but for the most part didn’t. Family therapy was non-existent. Shrinks did not have the luxury of time, nor did they seem interested. At least, not in the beginning.

So you can imagine I was not a happy employee in my first job as a professional social worker. But I wasn’t about to put my education to waste, so I pushed and prodded and got to do some family therapy, and in the end, even helped a few psychiatric interns learn some techniques. I did some co-therapy but it was at some personal cost.

It’s not easy working in a setting where you’re going against the grain. I cared deeply about the patients I met, to the point where it affected my sleep and home life. At the time, we had two small children. My youngest daughter came home one day from kindergarten with a drawing of Mommy. She had depicted me surrounded by people in hospital beds. At that time, I’d only been working at the hospital for nine months, but I realized it was time to leave. I couldn’t do things half-measure either at home or at work.

My Protagonist

My protagonist in THE RUBBER FENCE is not a social worker, nor is she ‘me.’  As a writer, of course, you put yourself into each of the characters you write, some modelled on your beliefs more than others. Dr. Joanna Bereza is a psychiatric intern who is passionate about her work. In that way, we are similar; otherwise, she is quite different. She has more guts than I do. As for the patients, all are fictitious. Still, the story reflects my experience at that time, both the highs and lows of working in a setting full of troubled people, who have little hope in their future.

Unexplored Territory

What I still find fascinating today, after more than twenty-five years of working in various therapeutic settings, is that the brain remains the most unexplored part of our being. Doctors and scientists are still trying to figure out how it works and what causes mental illness. Just recently, I saw an interview on BBC with a neuro-surgeon, Dr. Henry Marsh, who basically admitted that there was much he didn’t know about the brain and that at times, he was at a loss as to what to do.

And it seems, the debate about ECT continues. A recent article in The Age , an Australian newspaper, brings up the problem of shock treatment being done again without a patient’s informed consent.

As a writer, I also find it interesting that I’ve chosen to write about unexplored territory again. My debut novel had much to do with the unexplored ocean, an area we know less about than outer space, and my second novel has to do with ourselves, what makes us tick and how we navigate blindly the rocky road of emotions.

THE RUBBER FENCE will be available on March 3^rd as both a paperback and e-book. It is currently available for pre-order on Amazon.

Do you have stories that are taking too long to write? Stories that you’ve suffered over for years? Ones that you want to put out in the world but you’re either unsure, or they’re too close to home?  Or maybe like me, you’re shocked that shock treatment is still going on and shows no sign of slowing down. Would love to hear from you.

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