The Double-Edged Sword of Therapeutic Creative Writing
When honoring my brother’s memory risks going down a path that contributed to his suicide
This essay isn’t about therapeutic writing. Therapeutic writing, such as journaling or working with a therapist to explore feelings through prompts, has been enormously helpful in my experience. It is important to me at the outset of this essay that we do not confuse the topic of this piece with incredibly valuable, truly therapeutic writing.
Rather, this essay is about how creative writing has become simultaneously therapeutic and perilous. It is about how I have tried to find a balance between pursuing a passion for honoring my brother’s memory by extending his legacy while being terrified of the pitfalls and threats to my mental health that pursuing that path creates.
I have encountered a dangerous Catch-22 in my efforts to honor my twin brother’s memory, and this is my attempt to translate that experience into something valuable for other writers, as well as anyone who has gone through some form of trauma, loss, or heartbreak and is struggling to figure it out (read: pretty much everyone I know).
KEVIN’S EXPERIENCE, MY RESPONSIBILITY
Losing an identical twin to suicide is a difficult experience to describe. In the tempest of guilt and grief and anger and heartbreak, one of the most challenging aspects of living in the world without my brother is no longer having someone who automatically and intrinsically understands me and whatever I am going through at any given moment — a benefit of being a twin I took for granted in the first 36 years of my life. Even as our paths diverged in recent years, even when we lived on other sides of the planet, there was always a deep and unspoken understanding of how the other twin would feel or react. It was like having an inexorable external version of yourself — and then having that part of you ripped away suddenly and inexplicably and permanently and traumatically. And in that instant, the thing you want most — the thing that will drive you for the foreseeable future — to have some semblance of it back, to feel close to him again.
Coping with this unique dynamic is — if you will forgive the catastrophic understatement — difficult.
Since Kevin’s death, I have felt myself reaching out to people, trying desperately to recreate some small fraction of the presence Kevin provided in my daily life so I could feel a little closer to his memory. But in the wide variety of things I have done to try and feel some part of Kevin still present in the universe, the best way I have felt closer to my brother is to write.
As I discussed thoroughly in his eulogy, my brother was a brilliant writer. Kevin worked his ass off for more than a decade, “paying dues” as an assistant in nearly every facet of the film industry, working for producers and agents, actors and writer/directors, seeing first-hand how a movie goes from an idea, to a script, to a production, to a fully released film. He worked closely with famous and powerful people, helped found and build production houses, worked on a set, on a studio lot, and throughout the post-production and marketing process. But he also experienced a lot of trauma along the way, being severely abused by a notorious boss and then his wife — so much so I believe that it ultimately led to him making an impulsive and cataclysmic decision to take his own life in October of 2020.
The trauma my brother experienced and the abuse he suffered was, in my opinion, undeniably a major factor in his suicide. But I also know that he struggled to cope with the frequent failure facing ambitious storytellers who slam head-first into an industry that could be charitably called thinly-veiled capitalism on steroids. Entertainment is an industry — a way for people to make money. Kevin confirmed quickly that as often as creatives celebrate “storytelling”, the only audience that really matters is the shareholders, there is only so much money to invest in projects designed to attract audiences, and those responsible for the bottom line will always prefer sure bets over new voices. He struggled to get a needed break in a notoriously brutal industry, and so much of Kevin’s creativity was left unexplored.
And that’s where the problem that prompted this essay started. I loved Kevin’s ideas and still feel strongly to this day that his work was severely under-appreciated. Though a screenplay he wrote made it to the quarter-finals of the prestigious Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Competition, Kevin never so much as got his foot anywhere near the doors he needed to crack open for the project to become a reality. And it wasn’t just a single screenplay — Kevin had a long series of ideas, drafts, and notes he gathered over the years. Boxes of his binders and coiled notepads still fill a large portion of my attic, filled with ideas he explored and developed in various stages. I hate the idea that Kevin’s immense creativity will never exist beyond the anonymity and ignominy of my attic. And I know that if I don’t do something about it, no one will.
The responsibility I feel to extending Kevin’s memory is made even more imperative by the fact that as an atheist, Kevin believed that the only life we have after death is the impact we leave on the world. Either through relationships or work, we all leave some small impression on the universe that ripples out and affects the world after we die. How long those ripples have some effect on the world depends on how we live our lives and the legacy we leave behind. Kevin wanted his legacy to be the stories he helped tell. I wanted to help make sure the chance of that happening didn’t die with him.
I felt a responsibility to my brother. But acting on that impulse would prove perilous.
THE BOOK
After Kevin died, I started reading back through any and everything he had written. I read through our old text conversations, our emails back and forth, his draft stand-up routines, his old screenplays, and more. A few weeks after his death, as I was going through the travel blog Kevin kept on his trip in 2017, I came across a section in his final entry. In the entry, Kevin endeavored to commit himself to two big life decisions — the first was that he was moving to Munich to live with the woman who would eventually become his wife (as well as his abuser). The second was that he wanted to turn his travel blog into a book. He only followed through on one of those before he died.
So I started writing.
I read each of Kevin’s blog entries from his 2017 trip throughout Europe and then set about translating his first-person travelogue into a third-person narrative. Once I reached the end of the blog, as Kevin prepared to move to Munich, it didn’t feel like the story was done. So I just kept writing and ended up with a second part of a book, which told the story of Kevin’s relationship with his future wife from my perspective. The draft shares the details of the abuse Kevin suffered and though I realize that we aren’t ever going to know for sure why Kevin killed himself, part of my motivation to continue writing was the realization that this book was trying to explain the context surrounding Kevin’s suicide.
From there, I kept writing, and ended up detailing the awful first weeks after Kevin’s death. I wrote about our feeble attempts to get answers about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his suicide, the tragic and dramatic final interactions with Kevin’s wife, and my evolving perspective on grief as I went through the traumatic experience and coped with my own new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
After about a month, I had a 53,000-word draft manuscript of a book that is for Kevin and about Kevin. A memoir of sorts, but a unique one in that it tells the story of twins both with and without each other. But even more importantly for me, because of his witty travel blog and the voluminous writing Kevin and I did back and forth in email and text, I was been able to use a lot of his words in the draft, making this book also written with Kevin.
Writing this book was enormously therapeutic. It was an opportunity to force my emotions and a chaotic whirlwind of grief into linear thoughts — into sentences that formed coherent paragraphs. Contrary to truly therapeutic writing, however, this process demanded that what I wrote be both interesting and comprehendible to people living outside of my skull.
The book was an explanation of the inexplicable — the perspective that only an identical twin who knew someone as well as I knew Kevin could offer to try and explain how he could choose to leave us all behind. But I wasn’t writing it for myself or ever intending it to be a diary or journal. Kevin wanted his journey to be a book, and once I stepped back and re-read the draft I had written, I believed that I had created something that might not only enshrine my brother’s story in a way that would extend his legacy, but that might additionally be able to help people who were struggling with their own grief.
I thought that the loss of my identical twin brother to suicide, on top of my experience as the partner of someone who had to have a late-term abortion for a child we very much wanted to meet, as well as my experience as someone who lost their mother at a young age, gave me a unique perspective on grief that would be valuable to share with others going through traumatic experiences. I thought the narrative that transitioned from Kevin’s European trip, into the story of his toxic relationship, into the aftermath and my struggle to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder, all made for a compelling narrative that could offer readers context and perspective to their own pain. And, to be perfectly honest, I thought there were parts that were well-written that I wanted to share broadly. So I did some research and started sending query letters to book agents.
Big mistake.
I ended up sending individually tailored query letters to agents at 41 different agencies, each of whom I contacted based on research on “manuscript wishlist” websites and social media. Of the 41 queries I sent, only 12 responded. Of that dozen, only two did more than send a form letter back passing on the manuscript. Both of those two were relatively quick passes and only one of the two offered condolences for the recent and traumatic loss of my twin brother.
While I have never been opposed to input and edits, I was very worried about having to mess with the manuscript too much, as it was based on the truth of Kevin’s final years. The conversations were often verbatim and when they weren’t, they were based on my best recollection. To edit the plot would mean changing the truth, and that isn’t something I am willing to consider. I had hoped that an agent would respond to the draft with some encouragement and guidance (“Good start — if you just did this, this and this, the draft might have a shot at getting published…”), but after the snowpocalypse of a response to my first few dozen attempts at getting more than a quick dismissal to query letters, I wasn’t sure I had the emotional stamina to continue.
The therapist I have been speaking with since Kevin’s death suggested I revisit the work in a while to see if time has shifted my perspective in a way that could add more context to the book. Though disappointed, I knew she was right and realized I was at a crossroads — I could either continue to tinker and toil away at the draft, trying to divine the reason it was so thoroughly dismissed by the gatekeepers of the publishing industry, or I could move on for now.
So, with my ego pretty well-shattered, I sent the manuscript around to family and friends and put it away to hopefully revisit again someday.
THE SCREENPLAY
One of Kevin’s movie ideas that I always loved most was about a squirrel from Norse mythology named Ratatosk.
According to the myths, Ratatosk runs up and down the “world tree”, carrying messages from the eagle who is perched at the top of the tree and the dragon who gnaws at the tree’s roots. The myths characterize the squirrel as a trouble-maker who gossips and lies to the eagle and dragon, goading them to fight. Kevin liked the notion of an anthropomorphic shit-talking squirrel (anyone who knew Kevin would not be surprised about his affinity for an antagonizer) and he had the idea of writing a stoner comedy/buddy movie/classic heroes’ journey adventure film about the squirrel meeting and going on an epic quest with a twenty-something (think: a spitting image of the audience who goes to see movies like this). Kevin thought that making a movie similar to TED or GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, where an anthropomorphic CGI animal wise-cracks his way through an adventure would not only be a marketable movie (between AAA video games like the latest “Assassins Creed” and “God of War” entries and the blockbuster MCU movies, Norse mythology is undeniably having a moment in the pop culture zeitgeist), but it would also be a lot of fun to write. In my daydreams, Kevin and I were someday going to take a week of vacation time and work on this together. It would have been a lot of fun, but it never happened.
Then, a few months ago, as I was going through old emails Kevin and I traded in recent years, I came across one with an attachment — an outline for a screenwriting seminar Kevin considered putting together as a way to parley his entertainment industry experience and the research he had done to become a writer into something that helped pay the bills (yes, we both made “if you can’t do, teach” jokes). The outline wasn’t incredibly detailed, but included a list of topics Kevin would have covered to take fledgling writers, as he put it “through the process of turning an idea into a script, and what to do with that script once it’s finished”.
The initial section of Kevin’s outline — “prep”, included some references to other screenwriting seminars and seminal books about storytelling, such as “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. One day, on a whim, I started to imagine how I thought the protagonist Kevin talked about — that twenty-something stoner — could turn into a classic hero who hits each of the twelve beats of Campbell’s traditional heroes’ journey.
Kevin and I both adored Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, the History Channel show Vikings and Thor comics, so I had just enough of a base of understanding of Norse mythology to create a reimagined universe based on the myths and legends where this plot could take place. Once I wrote out each of the twelve heroes’ journey beats of how I thought Kevin would plot this story, I couldn’t help but really want to see this movie and felt like I may be onto something that would have made Kevin proud.
So I started writing.
Though two days later I had a very rough version of the story down in something that kinda-sorta resembled a screenplay (what Kevin’s outline called a “scriptment”), the process of writing it out highlighted some plot holes and instigated some ideas.
So I started reading. And listening to podcasts like the incredible “ScriptNotes” from Craig Mazin and John August, and doing research, and seizing every opportunity I could to learn everything I could about formatting and industry standards and character development and tropes and storytelling devices. Though I had read many (many) drafts of Kevin’s screenplays, I had never written one myself, and as I quickly learned, the style for describing a movie in writing is entirely different than the excessively verbose style I tend to prefer in (ahem) Mediums like this. After a few weeks of research and thinking about how I wanted to mold the story I had put to paper earlier, I downloaded screenwriting software and got to work in the moments not dominated by kids, family, and my job.
Writing Ratatosk opened up an opportunity for me not to just tell a story I had always wanted to tell with Kevin, but to include as much of Kevin into the draft as possible. The twenty-something stoner became an obvious analog for an imagined version of Kevin — a thirty-something struggling comic, an ex-pat who had just had a bad breakup and was trying to figure out the next chapter of his life. The hero’s name (Kay) was a not-at-all-subtle reference to Kevin. The banter between the protagonist and squirrel became a version of the banter Kevin and I shared, sometimes even lifting exact jokes and digs Kevin had sent me over text or email to include in the main characters’ exchanges. I found myself smiling as I wrote and re-read scenes where Kevin’s DNA was most present. It was the closest I felt to my brother in a long time.
But this process also put a bright and hot spotlight on Kevin’s absence. Every time I would smile at a line that felt like him, I would have an undeniable urge to send it to Kevin for confirmation of his approval (or, more likely, a punch-up and better version in response). I have never so badly wanted to share something with him, to get his input and collaboration. And I needed it. Kevin was exceptional at plotting rising action and at the characterization elements of the screenplay that were obvious weak points in my early versions.
All I have left is an internal relationship with my brother, and the moments I have created to try and feel close with him have inevitably and invariably made me realize how inadequate that solely internal relationship will forever be. As close as we were, as much as I could predict so much of how he would react to most situations, it is impossible to replace him. He’s gone. Forever. And writing serves as a constant reminder that there is nothing I can ever do to change that. Maybe it was because of the aforementioned melancholy intrinsic to the process, but as I wrote the screenplay, the process also became a way to explore some of the philosophy I had found comforting since Kevin’s death — especially the idea of existentialism so well expressed in Albert Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphus”.
By the time I was confident enough in the draft that I could share it with close friends and family for input (an easy-to-understand bullet point step on Kevin’s screenwriting seminar outline), the screenplay had become more than a stoner buddy comedy. Just underneath the surface, I tried to make it an allegory about a hero choosing to reject nihilism and evolve into someone who is willing to fight so people can have another chance to be better. I tried to make it about finding strength in friendship and deciding for yourself what matters in life. Of course, the progressive politics Kevin and I shared found a way to infiltrate the draft to include themes about bullies, imperialism, and authoritarianism, but mostly, this screenplay was about Kevin choosing empathy — choosing to try again. It was remarkably cathartic to write, comforting to re-read, and helpful in expressing a lot of the complicated emotions and thoughts swirling around my mind since Kevin’s death.
I sent the draft to a reading service that offered some helpful notes. While the plot of the book was based on fact and thus non-negotiable, the screenplay was a different story. I was excited to incorporate input and continue working on Ratatosk if doing so could give it a shot at succeeding — but as I started exploring the next steps on Kevin’s outline, I realized that going through a carousel of revisions without any end goal in site didn’t get me closer to my goal. Just like the book, I hadn’t started writing this as a journaling exercise. It wasn’t simply for my benefit. I wrote to share Kevin’s idea with as many people as possible. I wrote because I’m not okay with the idea that Kevin’s ideas will die with him. It matters to me that Kevin’s creativity is able to continue entertaining and inspiring people, even after his death.
Part of the challenge I described earlier — the internal chaos of wanting so badly for my brother to be here and understand and validate my feelings — is what makes creative writing as a therapeutic exercise so dangerous. If I were simply seeking to journal, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. The goal I had in the daydream driving my decision-making when I started writing Ratatosk was to one day see “based on an idea by Kevin Graham-Caso” projected on a screen. But it was beginning to become clear that achieving this was an incredible long-shot at best.
As I neared the end of the draft, I reached out to a friend I have made in recent months, a talented TV writer who has done exceptional work supporting and organizing people who, like Kevin, have suffered abuse while working as assistants in the entertainment industry. Though kind and supportive, she confirmed my fear — spec scripts from unknown writers just don’t get sold, much less made. It is virtually unheard of. There are various paths to succeeding as a writer, but if my goal was to see my brother’s name in the credits someday projected onto a screen at a theater, then there wasn’t a clear way for that to happen with a movie written on spec by a first-time writer. She kindly offered some other ideas and suggestions for staging a reading or some way to do something with the screenplay, but I struggled to move past the overly ambitious goal I had subconsciously established at the inception of this process.
Kevin’s death has made sharing what I write an essential part of this. Without diving into a tangent about the little I know about quantum physics and metaphysical questions of unperceived existence (“if a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?”), I’ll just say that writing for an audience of myself isn’t enough. It feels like failure. It feels like I’m letting Kevin down — like his legacy will only live as long as I do because I wasn’t good enough to get more people to care about it. And it raised other questions I now had running through my head like a news ticker on the bottom of a cable broadcast.
Why, when I believe that the roadblocks and obstructions Kevin encountered when trying to become a screenwriter contributed to his degrading mental health and factored into his suicide, would I be so foolish to pursue the same brutal gauntlet of rejection? Especially now that I had the added pressure of preserving Kevin’s legacy and the added hurdle of post-traumatic stress disorder to contend with?
Why would I be so arrogant as to think that I could succeed where Kevin’s hard work fell short during his lifetime? He was better at this than I am, and the pursuit wore him down and magnified the impact of abusive sociopaths he would encounter throughout his life. I’m incredibly lucky to have a good job, an amazing and supportive partner, two great young kids, and a great network of family and friends around me. But even with that support — I know that diving head-first into the same scenarios wasn’t smart. What was I thinking?
The brutal realization of inadequacy in something I felt so passionate about has made the benefits and comfort I felt while writing the screenplay glaringly fleeting. It has made me seriously consider the merit of allowing myself to continue using creative writing as a therapeutic outlet. In a perfect world, I would write whatever projects made me feel good and then contentedly file them away in a drawer. But that’s not enough. That doesn’t help extend Kevin’s legacy.
Right now, this is the best I can do.
FINDING COMMON STRENGTH
Someone I respect said recently that “it’s important for us to share our stories because it is our understanding of each other’s frailties that helps us find a common strength.” While I am hyper-aware of how unique my specific circumstances are, I also know that there are many people who write through grief, often focusing on creative endeavors to try and process their pain.
My experience, however, cautions against jumping into these sorts of projects without a clear understanding of your goals and the realistic possibility of achieving them. I honestly don’t know if I would have started working on either the book or the screenplay had I been more appropriately cautious of the harsh realities of simultaneously seeking validation from such a brutal industry and someone who has been gone for more than a year — especially when I am already dealing with recent emotional scars. It was foolish for me to jump in without more clear goals in mind before I started slapping my fingers against my keyboard.
But now that the projects are written, I feel like I have to continue sending them out into the world, hoping that someone will see the value in these stories — hoping that someone will help me extend Kevin’s legacy through his creativity. The burden of responsibility and fear of rejection persists, but I believe that at this point, perseverance is my best option.
Creative writing can be a powerful tool to help comprehend and cope with trauma. It can help share unfathomable experiences in ways that make them relatable and instructive and helpful to other people. But, as I learned in recent months, it can also be an emotional minefield. Yes, this piece is basically a few thousand words where “be careful” would have sufficed (hell, we probably could have gotten this done with emojis if we really wanted: ✍️ + 😭 = ‼️)… but then I wouldn’t have been able to passive-aggressively share the work that I have been so determined to find ways share as broadly as possible. Speaking of which…
As challenging as this experience has been at times, it has not been without lessons learned. It has, for example, given me a greater appreciation for writers who chose a career path that requires them to bare their souls on a daily basis and bravely barrel into the ego-annihilating process that is trying to be creative in a brutal business. I watched as Kevin toiled and grinded to do the work he thought was necessary to get where he wanted to go — but I didn’t fully appreciate how demanding that process is on your psyche.
But most of all, the experience has taught me something I thought worth sharing. If you have experienced some form of trauma, loss, or heartbreak and are struggling to figure it out (again, read: pretty much everyone I know), of course, I would caution you to “be careful” and have clear and realistic goals in mind before consciously investing your mental health on the outcome of an effort — be it creative writing or anything else you do to try and honor someone you lost. But I also know that it isn’t usually a conscious choice to end up in the center of a Catch-22. If that is you, just know that you are not alone. Know that there are people who have gone through what you are going through — that common strength exists. It will never be a replacement for who you lost — but know that there are people who are also seeking that same solace — who understand those incomprehensible feelings, and who hope you succeed.
Right now, hope is the best I can do.
