Hear from Stewart Foster (author of Pieces of Us) speaking from his own experience on why music matters and how important the spoken word can be in expressing emotion.
TW: This blog post contains content relating to mental health issues and eating disorders.
by Stewart Foster
There was a key moment in the early days of writing Pieces of Us. It came when I worried about some of my friends’ reactions, should they read the book. All would know a little about my eating; some knew it was a big thing, others probably just thought it a quirk of my nature – a thing Stew did.
My character, seventeen-year-old Jonas, felt the same way. In the first chapter, he says to his best friend: ‘Louis, if ever I thought anyone would actually read this, I’m not sure I would write the first line.’ And I sat back from the screen and thought, ‘God, that is so true for me too.’
I kept writing, still with those worries in my head, not just about the bulimia but also the closeness of Jonas’s relationship with Louis. Later in the book, there’s a poem called The Cormorant. I wrote it one Sunday evening after watching a nature programme on TV showing a cormorant regurgitating food for its young. It repulsed me; an instant picture of what I was doing to myself in the bathroom. That poem went under my bed with thousands of other pieces of poetry I’d written since the age of ten.
I eventually showed it to my best friend two years later as we put songs together to record. He had no idea what The Cormorant was about, until late one night, I explained it – that it wasn’t about an ugly seabird, it was me. Like others, like my whole family, he had no idea of my secret, just thought I’d lost weight as I’d got taller. The next evening as we recorded it onto tape, he stopped midway through and said, ‘Stew, you could have told me, you didn’t have to hide it in a song.’
Looking back, I realise I wasn’t hiding behind the songs – showing him was my way of telling him, in the same way that you might write a diary and secretly hope someone might read it.
Looking back, I realise I wasn’t hiding behind the songs – showing him was my way of telling him, in the same way that you might write a diary and secretly hope someone might read it.
In a secondary school visit recently, I was reminded of how I used to feel at school, even later at university, because I believe this can be what mostly holds us back, like the Year Seven student I met recently who told me he found it hard to write.
‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘Because I always end up on my Xbox.’
‘No, why?’
‘Because I want to talk to my friends.’
‘No, why?’
‘Because I don’t have confidence, and I’m scared what my friends will think.’
‘There you go!’
The giggling in the room didn’t hide that that’s what the majority of classmates were thinking too: confidence, trust, peer pressure, what will my friends think?
Students are in the middle of the most confusing years of their lives, often feeling isolated in class, often (at university) hundreds of miles from home. Whether through song, poem, short story, third person, first person, or writing about dreams, it’s OK to put your feelings and emotions in them. In my case, a novel. And in that novel, what it took for me to write it – to block out those worries, block out those I thought would cast doubt – was to come up with this plan.
When my friendship ended with the person I’d first shown The Cormorant to, I was guilty of pushing those poems back under the bed until years later, whilst at university, I met someone who resurrected those feelings of close friendship and trust. They backed me with my writing – from emails to Facebook messages full of poetry, lines, thoughts, and chapters. They joined me in dreams of huge contracts and winning The Booker Prize.
And on those nights where doubts crept in, when Jonas’s actions became explicit and his secret eating disorder came out (along with it mine), I would hesitate over paragraphs, lines, words, and then I’d gather myself and say, ‘If I can say this to my friend, then I can write it in this book.’
It’s hard to put our feelings out there.
In poetry.
In songs.
In books. But for me, it became harder to say nothing at all.
Pieces of Us is OUT NOW and published by Simon and Schuster
Pieces of Us
Two secrets, an unbreakable bond … and a powerful and heartbreaking love letter to a life-changing friendship, from award-winning author, Stewart Foster.
As the summer before college begins, Jonas is hiding a secret. He suffers with bulimia, but no one knows. Not even he knows how bad it really is. Until he meets Louis, a confident dreamer who believes in a better future for Jonas and together they enjoy a sun-kissed summer filled with music, memories and life-changing moments.
But when tragedy strikes, Jonas must decide if he has the strength to face things alone ….
Stewart Foster
Stewart Foster is an adult and children’s novelist, born in Bath. His books have won multiple school and library awards and are recommended by Empathy Lab and Reading Well.
His first children’s book, The Bubble Boy, was published in 2016, winning Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award in 2016 and many schools and libraries awards, as well as being nominated for The Carnegie Book Award.
Since then, Stewart has written four more children’s books: All the Things That Could Go Wrong, Checkmates, The Perfect Parent Project and Can You Feel the Noise?
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