Ksenia Anske

I never thought that one day I’d be writing books. My friends pushed me into writing, literally. And even when I started, I was so afraid that nobody would care for any of my stories that I almost quit altogether several times. If you are in the same place, please, don’t. Don’t quit.

Writing is such a beast that it gets better the more you do it. And, funny enough, the more you do it, even if you are not consciously trying, the better you get. To all those people wondering why in the world you would want to write yet another book to add to millions and billions and gazillions of others, I say this: write for therapy.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if anyone will read your work or not. What matters is that you’re shedding your pain, opening up your imagination and becoming a happier person. We need more people like this in this world, we need more writers, more artists. What matters is that while you’re writing, you’re happy.

You don’t believe me? Well, it’s not me who said it. I went to one of Chuck Palahniuk’s readings one day, because he is one of my favorite authors, and there he told us a story. It was a story about him writing a short story Romance. I won’t spoil it for you, you can read it here. He said that at some point someone in some big newspaper, or maybe small newspaper, wrote a comment or a review on it said, “Chuck Palahniuk fucked a retard.” He asked the audience, how do you continue writing after reading something like this? And he said, you write for therapy. That’s all there is to it.

I took his advice to heart. I started writing for therapy. Before my friends asked me to write, my therapist asked me to write, because at 33 I wanted to kill myself, because I revisited my adolescence and realized where my nightmares were coming from. My father has sexually abused me, and at 16 I ran away from home, only to become pregnant at 17 and a mom at 18. I have successfully suppressed everything to keep up with life, but my body was mad at me, and my body turned me very sick in my 30’s. If not for writing, I wouldn’t be here. If this is not enough reason for you to start writing, than I don’t know what is.

Well, wait, this was supposed to be a post about my work and tips for artists. I got carried away here in shouting my passion for writing, pardon me. So, about me, I’m a transplant from Russia, moved here about 15 years ago not knowing English. My therapist tells me I was able to start writing in a different language about my pain because it accessed some other parts of my brain that were not blocked. Go figure, maybe it’s true, maybe not, I only know that I love English language, it’s like I found my language finally.

Now, about my work, SIREN SUICIDES, my 1st novel, is the novel that talks about suicide, drawn from my own experiences. Writing it pulled me out of the dark land called “I want to die I don’t want to live leave me alone all of you.” It was a scary place to be, and I’m glad I’m not there anymore. The story starts out with Ailen Bright trying to drown herself on her 16th birthday, only to turn into a siren and discover that her father is a siren hunter. They embark on a hunt that spans through 3 books, a la Alice in Wonderland gone all things water and songs.

ROSEHEAD, my 2nd novel, is based on me escaping into my head when I was little. I had (still have?) ADD, ADHD, and PTSD, so I wrote a story about what it’s like being a kid with this stuff and how nobody understands you and you escape into a fantasy to cope with it. This story is about Lilith Bloom, a 12 year old girl who with the help of her talking whippet Panther solves a mystery of her grandfather’s famous rose garden that devours some interesting things in order to be so vibrant and red. It’s a mystery / magical realism, in the mood of The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of my favorite books growing up. So, there, that was about me and my work, now about tips. There are only three, really:

Write every day, no matter what anyone tells you. Keep writing and never stop.

Ksenia Anske
http://www.kseniaanske.com/
@kseniaanske

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