Why I Wrote the Book I Hated Writing

Writing a book is hard. Writing a book about losing a child is another level of hard entirely. That’s the challenge Lisette Rimer faced when she set out to tell the story of her son Patrick, who died by suicide nearly twenty years ago. In this month’s featured article, she shares the lessons learned across decades of wrong turns, difficult questions, and more than a few editors. Plus the one question that kept her going.

How do you write a book you hate to write? How do you wrestle with thousands of words? You have no idea what to say. You second-guess every word. You are a poser and a sham. You waste hours rewriting. You take so long, you retire from teaching middle school because you’re not getting enough done on the book. When students ask what you’re going to do next, you say you’re going to be a Walmart shopper. It’s easier than writing.

That’s what I was facing nearly twenty years ago when my son Patrick Wood killed himself. I was coasting along in my mother-wife-teacher life when my husband drove to school one afternoon, walked into my tutoring room, and said he needed to tell me something. “It’s bad,” he said, “It’s really bad.” He was right. It was the worst a parent can hear about a twenty-three-year-old son who graduated from Stanford less than a year before.

The next few months were torture. I could barely answer the many condolences. But when one friend gently asked why Patrick killed himself, the solution came clear. I would answer the condolences in one story. I would tell them why Patrick did it, or I would die trying.

The torture of grief shifted to organizing the torture of grief. How was I going to answer why Patrick killed himself? I had no idea. And that no idea led me down a bunch of wrong turns—my grandmother’s childhood in Paris, my great, great uncle’s Napoleon china, and my great, great grandfather’s blockbuster theft of $4 million in 1884. I got lost in rebuilding through family history. The problem was, nobody wanted to read family history. They wanted to read about Patrick.

I’ve learned you can ignore one or two of the same criticisms from your beta readers. But when five people say the same thing, you’d better pay attention. In my case, it was way more than five. They made me face up. I had to make Patrick come alive so readers would care about one of the many thousands who kill themselves every year. I started with what I knew—scenes of being pregnant with Patrick and his twin sister Libby, trying to nurse two babies at once (note to selves: it’s a two-person job), Patrick reading when he was two years old, winning a scholarship to Pomfret School, and then another to Stanford.

The scenes reminded me of the good in Patrick’s life. But I struggled to make others care. The solution: Stein on Writing, where Sol Stein says make the writing visual. I did as he said. I made it concrete. I described Patrick’s final hours in his Berlin apartment—the posters, the books, the CDs, and the charcoal he would burn. Some said I was too graphic, that I was telling others how to kill themselves. But I put my mental movie camera in his apartment to reveal his brilliance, his torture, and his reasons.

I was okay at the scenes. I had been a publicist for the Connecticut legislature and taught English for seventeen years. But I was over my head about stitching the scenes together. My guidepost was Harper Lee, whose early chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird were more like unconnected anecdotes. An editor saw the promise and said the chapters needed unity. Lee worked on them for two years in a cold-water flat in New York City, and the result was a Pulitzer Prize and the book I taught for many years.

I figured if unity can be a problem for the greats, it can also be a problem for the not-so-greats. My own editor’s version of the Harper Lee example was that Patrick’s story needed a spine. My floating scenes needed to chronologically build the theme of why suicide. It took many more years and editors to create that spine. Each one prompted deeper thinking, and if I could emphasize one part of this article, that would be it. Editors see the shortcomings you don’t see. They save you the embarrassment of wincing at mistakes and omissions, in my case, neglecting my mother as another example of suicide.

The more deeply I became invested, the more driven I was. But the method that kept me at the keyboard when I hated writing the most was asking what I would regret before I died. The answer came clear. I felt like I let Patrick die one time, and I wasn’t going to do it again.

I followed the lessons I taught my students. Number 1: Model your writing after relevant examples. If you’re going to write a literary critique, look at New York Times book reviews. In my case, I read every suicide memoir I could find. Most were good at describing what happened but not good at telling why it happened. I was going to tell why if it took the rest of my life, and so far it has. Part of the reason is that I ignored my own advice to get black on white. I would tell my hesitant eighth-graders to get something on paper, anything that comes to mind. You can always fix it later. Instead, I obsessed over every word. I read them aloud several times—87 thousand of them. I had no confidence. Suicide took care of that. And I was a first-time author. Plus, the book had to be worthy. It had to stand the test of time. It had to stand with the best books I read. The years, the failures, and the learning were worth every minute. The result is a book that shines a personal light on gay youth, perfectionism, depression, and suicide. It’s the hindsight that others can use to gain foresight on the second leading cause of death for young people. If you’re wondering whether the years and the failures are worth it, ask yourself what you want to accomplish before you die. What do you want to say you did? You may hate the prospect. It might drag you through the hell you’ve been avoiding—the obsession with words, the difficult questions of humankind. But the answer will come clear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Lisette Rimer received a BA in Sociology and an MA in Secondary Education at the University of Connecticut. She was a publicist for the Connecticut legislature and an award-winning English teacher at Rectory School in Pomfret, Connecticut. The joy of three children and country living was shattered by the suicide of her youngest son, Patrick Wood. She began a search to learn why, at first through Patrick’s brilliance and then through his depression and her mother’s similar death. 

She wrote her first book to reveal the suicidal mind through the misery of depression and the difficulty of coming out. She wrote to learn why the least likely person would kill himself. Back from Suicide is the story of life after tragedy and the search for respite through understanding. ​

Back from Suicide won the Storytrade Nonfiction Prodigy Award, the Book of the Year First Nonfiction and Nonfiction LGBTQ+ awards, second place overall Book of the Year award, the PenCraft Nonfiction Memoir award, and the Firebird Book Awards for LGBTQ Nonfiction and Death and Dying. Rimer has been published in the Hartford Courant and the Stanford Daily.

Learn more about Lisette Rimer and her work at https://www.backfromsuicide.com/

Back From Suicide: Before and After the Essential Patrick

It’s the enigma of self-destruction after a lifetime of success. It’s for parents, LGBTQ families, mental health advocates, and suicide survivors walking through grief, identity, and hope. It is a mother’s pursuit of the biggest question of humankind. Why do people kill themselves?

Marie Lisette Rimer supports her son’s gay life. She’s in awe of his achievements. Patrick Wood is a valedictorian, an AP Scholar, and a National Merit Scholarship winner with perfect SAT scores. A year after he graduates from Stanford with honors, she struggles to understand his suicide.

Rimer searches for answers through Patrick’s life, Berlin’s gay scene, and his death after rejection from a boy he wanted. She draws from Stanford psychiatrists, research, memoirs, and her own awakening to confront the painful question of why suicide? She finds answers through therapy and the science of depression to expose the hidden forces behind sadness, perfectionism, identity, and isolation. She weaves guilt and grief with evidence and understanding.

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