Post the Twenty-Third - on distance

I've mentioned before that I'm writing a play for my dissertation. I've also said that it's a fairy tale, set in the eighteenth century, which focuses on a princess who uses a wheelchair. Or, more accurately, a Bath chair - because that's what the wicker contraptions of the period were called, being named after what was one of the most popular spa destinations at the time. Today I want to write about it in a bit more detail, and to discuss the concept of distance.

Despite that fact that I have acknowledged that there are some parallels between my own situation and that of my protagonist (which have been increased by the issues with my chair), I have also been very clear that it is not at all autobiographical. (I mean, it's a fairy tale set nearly three hundred years ago, and I've never been a princess, or had the desire to be one. So it isn't some sly form of wish fulfilment, by any means - I have little patience for author inserts.) That said, it is impossible to write something which is not even slightly informed by our own experience, and I have found myself touching a few nerves recently. This brings me to the idea of 'distance', and the importance of maintaining a healthy balance between a passionate investment in a project and becoming overly emotionally-involved in the things happening to the characters.

Many of the things my heroine deals with are a very deliberate assessment of the way society regards individuals with disabilities. Indeed, the very presence of a wheelchair user is designed to provoke the audience into questioning not only their perceptions of royalty and beauty but also why it doesn't happen more often, even just in fiction. Although the script situates the story in a bygone era, I am trying to utilise that comfortable place to interrogate the contemporary world, which means it is not so distant and safe as it might first appear.

It turns out the consequences of this strategy are being felt as much by me (whilst I write) as I would hope they would be by my eventual audience. The anxieties expressed by my main female character, whether about love, loss or seemingly more mundane things like who will get her up in the morning, are ones I share - and I haven't yet mastered the art of writing this particular piece without getting the page wet.

Ah well, at least I can truthfully state in my commentary that tears went into it, if not quite sweat and blood...yet.