Tess Woods reveals the fears that helped inspire her new novel Love and Other Battles

In today’s toxic teen culture of online slut-shaming and revenge porn, Tess Woods’ new novel was inspired by her own experience of motherhood — and became an outlet for her worst nightmares about it.

Perth-based author Tess Woods.

In Love and Other Battles, I created a character inspired by my sixteen-year-old daughter. Except the story didn’t turn out to be a sweet tribute to her from me. Instead, the character of CJ Stone, who shares my daughter’s birthday, long wild curls, bohemian dress sense, musical talent and soft-hearted nature, became an outlet for my worst nightmares about motherhood.

It’s often said that this generation of parents are free falling as we raise teens with social technology that was never available before. There’s no handbook for us. We can’t seek the advice of elders because we’re the first with teens in an era when one in five Australians who send nude selfies become victims of revenge porn, meaning the images are shared without consent. Thanks to smart phones, teens have unprecedented access to pornography. Boys have become so desensitised to porn that it’s normalised the act of asking for naked images of their girlfriends. It’s the same old story, boys love to “look” and girls have some crazy need to please their boyfriends. Throw camera phones and social media into the mix and the result is a culture of online slut-shaming and trauma for the victims. This was where CJ’s story took me.

I placed myself in CJ’s mind, a teenage girl, in love with her boyfriend and desperate to make him happy. A girl whose life would derail after she gave her boyfriend what he wanted. Then I placed myself in the mind of CJ’s mother who harboured a smug pride at how close she and her daughter were. A mother who was front and centre at information sessions on raising resilient happy kids. A mother who monitored screen time and social media. A mother who secretly thought she was winning at this parenting gig. A mother just like me.

Love And Other Battles by Tess Woods.

What if this mother’s daughter ended up self-harming, suicidal even, after becoming the victim of revenge porn? What would she do? How would she cope upon discovering everything she believed to be true about her daughter’s life was a facade?

As CJ’s story unfolded, it forced me to examine my relationship with my daughter. I had to rethink what I expected, demanded of her — perfect decision-making at all times. I made countless mistakes at her age and that was without the minefields of Snapchat and Instagram. So why did I insist on better from her?

What I came to understand when I let my imagination run wild with the worst case scenario for my child is that I can’t control my daughter’s decisions. If she’s one day tempted to send a future partner a nude selfie, can I stop her? Not a hope. Could I prevent someone from sharing private images of her? Of course not. All I can do is keep reassuring her that there’s nothing in this world so terrible she can’t come to me, there’s nothing that will shock me to the point of not loving her. I can tell her how precious she is, how precious her body is. How it’s her choice and hers alone to decide who she shares it with and in what capacity. I can educate her about the risks of revenge porn. The rest is up to her.

In telling CJ’s story, I also realised that my generation of parents aren’t actually inventing the wheel. As much as we like to consider ourselves pioneers with our social-media-connected kids, our parents agonised over the choices we made too, but in a different context, that’s all. It’s not technology that’s the issue; it’s the fact that teenagers will always have peer group pressure and they’ll always make choices their parents might not agree with. It’s the very nature of adolescence. This generation has the unfortunate risk of their mistakes being broadcast to the world. But that’s them being pioneers, not us. They’re the ones who need to navigate that risk, and make their mistakes doing so. We just need to be there for them.

*Tess Woods is a fiction writer published by HarperCollins Australia. Her most recent novel, Love And Other Battles, is described as “utterly unputdownable” by bestseller Nicola Moriarty. Away from writing, Tess describes herself as “a physiotherapist who lives in Perth, Australia, with one husband, one son, one daughter, one dog and one cat who rules over them all.”

Speaking of Nicola, her new thriller The Ex is our Book of the Month. Readers get it for 30 per cent off at Booktopia — just use the code BCBT19.

And remember you can discuss love, other battles and much more at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.

Originally published as Tess Woods reveals the fears that helped inspire her new novel Love and Other Battles