I often examine personal issues through writing.
Many of you may as well.
In my younger years, it was through wildly passionate letters full of emotional outbursts. To one correspondent, in particular, I’d often begin this way:
“I don’t really know what I think about this situation, so I’m going to write you a letter spelling it out with the hopes I’ll know what I to do by the end.”
Away my fingers first wrote and then typed, multi-paged letters.
It usually worked.
(But pity the poor correspondent on the other end expecting a cheerful tale of a fun-filled life!)
The same thing, of course, happens while writing a novel.
Tell me the story
A counselor was fascinated to learn I was writing a novel. “Tell me the story.”
I was wary. “You know, this manuscript is going really well. I’m not sure I want you to hear the story. You might point out things I don’t recognize.”
“Just tell me until you feel uncomfortable. We can stop at any point.”
I told her the story.
She liked it.
She then told me who all the characters really were.
Dumbfounded, I stared at her.
My brain raced.
Good heavens! She was right.
While on one level, I knew I was working out some issues–money mostly–she saw right through to the fundamentals: emotional and family issues.
Her words were gentle. “How do you want your story to turn out?”
I didn’t even have to think. “Happily.”
(Unhappily, this exercise put me off finishing the novel for a good six months. However, the novel and my personal issues did have a happy ending!)
What’s really going on with your story?
Since that particular novel-writing experience, I’ve been more conscious of the underlying stories of my life in the novels I’ve worked on.
I know I’m explaining financial quirkiness to my family in Getting to Theo’s Wedding. Bringing My Baby Back Home is about missing my husband and a poor choice made when someone offered her baby for adoption.
Waking Dreams of Hope is about coming to terms with motherhood. The Reflection Ark grapples with a Greek-tragedy type question: how to resolve the high price you pay to get the desires of your heart?
Transcriptions explored grief, money, bitterness and the effect of music to change everything.
In most of these cases, I only gradually recognized the personal issues pushing the wordsmithing.
Eventually, I set all those novels aside and wrote a spiritual memoir, which was far healthier.
(The memoir also allowed me to see how God had been busy in my life while I thought I was doing something else!)
Curiously, the books I’ve had published did not spring from personal issues.
The Dogtrot Christmas and An Inconvenient Gamble incorporated elements of my family history (including ancestors as characters).
Bridging Two Hearts sprang from a friend’s fear of bridges and what she did about it.
The Gold Rush Christmas came out of a trip to Alaska 22 years ago.
Or did it?
When I reread the book in published form, I saw something else.
A brother and a sister.
Could it be?
Well, what would you do if your brother asked you?
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