Trauma for sale, Catriona Morton on writing the past and hoping for the future
Mining your trauma to pay your rent - a phrase that haunts Catriona Morton. We catch up via zoom whilst she’s at her parents house, following the paperback release of their first book. The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture is a non fiction book exploring her own history of experiencing sexual violence woven with the wider landscape of survivors in the UK system. We slip into easy conversation, discussing our own writing projects, work perils, pets and allergy testing. The usual plethora of randomness that circles our interactions. Catriona and I became fast friends when I read her book on its first release. We connected through the joy and heartache of freelance writing, and being sick.
So there is, of course, bias. But, I hope you trust my recommendation enough to know that this book might just change your life.
As the book is reprinted into this smaller format, Morton’s publishers asked her if she would like to make any changes or edits. This perhaps sounds like a tempting offer for a writer like Morton who has exposed so much to the page, and thus, the public. There are words like brave, important, tireless, vital, that could (and maybe should) be attached to a work like hers. But this interview will not regurgitate those sentiments, read the stories as Morton intended to understand what vitality means in the context of sexual violence. Instead we talked about what it is like to produce a work so vulnerable, what the publishing machine can do to writers who produce such books and what needs to change for these stories to be more than just a flash in the plan, or someone’s profit.
On revising the content Morton felt it was important to stay true to what 24-year-old them believed: “it's important to have that account of a young woman, experiencing those events at that time”. It is, however, easier said than done. “One of my worries was that people would read the book, which is the same for any socio-political non fiction writing, and assume those thoughts are my hard and fast rules about a topic, and that those rules remain, even years later”.
They neatly illustrated my own fears in creating something as static as a book. Many journalists and writers create work exclusively online [much to our parents’ disappointment], which in some ways is less anxiety inducing. The cyclical nature of the news and pop culture too, means that stories will be buried on page 4 or 5 of a publication before the week is up, whereas a book remains as an object, for well, as long as it's in print. Morton says separating herself the person from herself the author, is important to reduce the worry - that and therapy - which is a theme throughout our conversation, and not one to dismiss.
“Since the book was released, I have become more private. I used to talk about things on social media to a wider audience and now, I don’t. I just want to do nice things for myself”. A comment that seems continuous amongst people in awareness raising spaces. Morton notes she wrote this book for survivors, but still it can feel difficult to reconcile the details being there for all to read.“If I were to re-edit, I would perhaps take out some of the more detailed comments around sex and dating. But that might be internalised shame talking too”.
The act of publishing a book feels like an achievement, and we live in a goal oriented society, so the industry that puts books on our shelves is not above the machine of capitalism. Morton fell into a prolonged period of depression after releasing the book, which in fact started even before its publication day - “three days before, I cried so much. I felt like I couldn't experience it. I can't be excited because all I'm thinking about is the next thing”.
“I was working a minimum wage job whilst the book was published, which I hated and that detracted from everything, I was just surviving and couldn’t reflect on all of the emotions that publishing the book brought - people couldn’t see that”. Morton is right, although Twitter is often arguing over author's wages and other jobs, it seems the message still isn’t through that writing a book is not always the start of a miraculous career pivot, and the pressure for all involved with producing a book, remains damaging, “it is these like cycles, that exhaust everyone. It's not just authors, it is literally everyone in the process”.
Everyone in the process means copy editors, marketing assistants, proofreaders, agents, a host of people who are consuming work that might be personally affecting them. There are murmurs that the publishing industry is on the precipice of change, with unions fighting hard for recognition and USA-based workers heading out in the summer of strikes, but many avenues of publishing are yet to make the mainstream discourse. One of which Morton (and I) are concerned about is the general lack of mental health care for all involved. Morton emphasises her own positive experience, a joyous relationship with her agent and editor, but knows that is a product of privilege, luck and her own support system.
“There's like two things going on. These stories need to be told. 20 years ago, stuff like this was published at a much slower rate, but it can never stop being talked about. So it's great. But there's also the aspect where the publishing industry is a business. And they're doing it to see how many copies they can sell”. This becomes somewhat of a murky area for self-aware writers like Morton, who acknowledge their experiences are being essentialised, packaged up with a neat bow and sold - to the publishing house, then the sales execs, the bookshops and the readers.
“I only got the deal because I had the brand name of the BBC [Morton had a successful podcast on a similar topic to the book, produced by them]. That's fucked up. Because why is it my voice? My voice isn't more important than anyone else's”. Although Morton can feel assured by the sheer number of readers who’ve expressed both personally to her, and through online reviews, that the book changed their life, the conundrum of producing it remains:
“I feel multiple things about it. And that's okay. I was 24 when I got this deal. I will be coping with the emotional fallout from writing about my sexual trauma, for the rest of my life. I'm still glad that it happened. And like I said at the beginning, it's important that a young woman's experience is told. But it was lonely”.
What is missing in Morton’s eyes from publishing books about trauma? A lot of things. Her principal concern now is what she refers to as a lack of wraparound care. Wraparound care may be familiar if you are read up on the intricacies of reality television - the psychological testing of prospective contestants on shows like Survivor, or the demise of daytime drama like Jeremy Kyle.
In Morton’s specific media experience, wraparound care was formulated for her and the guests of her BBC podcast, to help deal with any emotions brought up in the production process. All participants had access to a trained therapist during the show and for weeks after airing. Both Morton and I make eyes, knowing this is likely to cover their own backs more than offering something from the goodness of their hearts. However, it could go a long way in publishing, at least at the big houses that continuously boast healthy profits, to invest in the welfare of authors and staff, who work on books like The Way We Survive.
The question that lingers at the end of most debut author interviews is, what’s next? They are moving their eyes towards fiction - laughing that they are “tired of talking about myself”. Although I am already privy to some of the themes, I can tell you it’ll be similar but different to The Way We Survive: “It has nothing to do with sexual violence, and that was really important to me. The novel isn't devoid of me, but I wanted to be creative, and not just talk about trauma”.
We discuss Rebecca Watson’s experimental novel, Little Scratch, another book about sexual violence. Watson’s book is a fictional story of a woman assaulted by their boss, but numerous interviewers ask her if it’s autobiographical. In an interview with The Guardian Watson rebukes such questions once and for all: “I have said before that I was raped, but the narrator’s experience is very different to mine; there are multiple ways that someone can be assaulted, and multiple ways someone can react. I sometimes regret that piece, only because it acts as a springboard in interviews.”
Therein lies the trouble with producing work so tied to the self, whether it is fiction or reportage-based non-fiction. In Morton’s case, when you are most known for work that reopens the wounds of your life, it is a catch twenty two: “I can only write about what I'm interested in, and that is connected to my life experience and what I know.” but she acknowledges that the next book will do things differently. “I need to find the middle ground, the first book was baring all and I don't want to disregard my lived experience but I am still looking for the bit in the middle. I guess I am choosing fiction because I don't want people to feel like they're getting more of me”.
Getting more of me is a telling phrase, it is certainly a gendered experience that assumes writers are producing work as a form of self-imposed therapy. In the same interview quoted above, Watson notes “This novel was never an act of catharsis. It was a joyful act of creation”. Similarly, author and Professor Meena Kandasamy went as far to produce an entire second novel complete with editorial footnotes in order to illustrate to critics that her previous story, although influenced by her own abusive marriage, was not a memoir in disguise. So it will be unsurprising if Morton’s next critics ponder the same questions of her fiction work.
Although readers know, we are not getting any more of her, for now at least.
