The Power of Proximity: On Using Personal Experience to Write Fiction
For me, writing isn’t just about crafting a narrative; it’s about shedding light on the profound realities people face. I’m a practicing lawyer, and I get mad about what’s wrong with our legal system. Rather than deciding what to write about and then embarking on research, I‘m inspired to write about legal situations that my clients or friends have faced, and then I write from my direct experience of that injustice.
(50 Reasons for Your Characters to Be Stuck Together.)
The Camille Delaney series, my legal thrillers, serve a dual purpose. The stories are character-driven and take the reader on a ride with the expected twists and turns of a fun page-turner. But my real goal is to educate readers about some injustice in the legal system that I believe needs to be exposed. And since both my protagonist and I are lawyers, moms, and social justice warriors, I write from my heart and my own frustration, using actual stories and issues people I know well have experienced.
Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy, is a lawyer who represents individuals on death row. When I first heard him speak about the concept of proximity, I realized that this is my approach to writing, and basically to life in general. Stevenson explains that the only way we can really make change is by getting proximate to a problem. And it’s not just physical proximity—we need to be in relationship with people who are suffering injustices. A favorite Stevenson quote of mine is:
“Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”
My first two novels in the Camille Delaney series are based on an issue that caused me to quit my lucrative legal practice in the area of medical negligence. It made me crazy that insurance companies—and the legal system in general—constantly tried to minimize the value of a human life. Most people don’t realize that in our legal system, if someone they love dies as the result of negligence, that person’s value is based on what they would have earned, had they lived.
I don’t have to engage in research to write about how the lives of older people, marginalized people, and children have very little value in our legal system; I know the nuances of trial work and litigation because I live it every day. I’ve held the hands of clients during depositions where surly insurance defense lawyers attacked them and their deceased loved one. I’ve cried with my clients when juries came in with nominal awards for the loss of their loved ones.
My upcoming book is about incarcerated women and the importance of them being reunited with their children. It stemmed from my experience of founding an organization that teaches formerly incarcerated people how to engage in the political process to change laws that create barriers for them upon reentry. This work brought me proximate with some of the bravest people I know, and who I now count as some of my closest friends. I know these moms. I’ve met their kids. I know the impacts that imprisoned mothers have on our children and through those children, on our entire society.
Getting proximate with incarcerated women and seeing how important reunification with their children is for a family and ultimately, a community, lit a fire in me that I had to express through writing. My manuscript is currently being reviewed by several friends who are formerly incarcerated mothers and is being passed around inside a women’s prison for comment on the accuracy of the experience of being a mother inside prison.
I don’t do “research” in the traditional sense because I write from personal experience—my courtroom scenes are real because I have spent countless hours in those cold and unfriendly spaces. My hospital scenes come directly from my experience as a registered nurse. And the rest of my stories are based on being a lifelong listener.
I listen to the experiences of my friends. We’re girlfriends, and so we talk about what it was like for them to be a mom in prison, separated from their kids. We talk about how their kids suffered on the outside, living with relatives—aching for their moms. We talk about challenges their kids face once reunited with their moms. We talk about how their kids struggle because their moms can’t volunteer in their schools because they have a felony on their record. Even if that felony is decades old. Those conversations are open-hearted and proximate.
I do my best to show readers how much privilege plays a part in our society. It’s not lost on me that my own privilege allows me to be a successful lawyer, a non-profit founder, and now an author. With the amount of power I carry, it’s important to me that I contribute to a broader discourse on justice, empathy, and the transformative power inherent in storytelling.
Check Amanda DuBois’ Camille Delaney mystery series here:
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