"Handle Me with Care"

Where do writers get their ideas? That's perhaps the most important question about writing that has no single right answer. Each writer is an individual who has individual ideas that capture the writer's fancy. It's less the uniqueness of an idea than the way it's expressed and packaged that gives each of us our writing approach and style.

We sometimes seek inspiration from those around us. This is a fruitful source, as long as we remember that the Hippocratic Oath adjuration to "first do no harm" applies to writers as well as doctors. I heard on the radio last week that a newly-released movie about life in the Deep South fifty years ago has led to a blowup between a writer and a person who claims that the writer, in essence, committed theft in using the real-life person as a character without permission. Without making a judgment on this case, it's a reminder that we have the power to destroy a good name or reputation by careless words or characterizations.

I teach history for a living. Part of what I do is to discuss with my students the canons of historical research and writing and the historian's obligation to do justice to the dead. In graduate school, I suffered several professorial bludgeonings until I display an adequate grasp of this key point. One who seeks to live by the credo of doing justice to others may want to consider exercising caution in harvesting grist for their writer's mill.

My wife and I recently spent ten days in Russia, cruising the waterways from Moscow to St. Petersburg. I crammed a notebook full of ideas about characters to populate the landscapes we saw. One thing we noticed in talking with Russians is the apprehensiveness many of them show about discussing their nation's past. Faulkner was right: their past isn't even past. It may not be for generations to come. I assume that all of us who love the craft of writing share a commitment to the truth, even expressed in fictional or poetic forms. I'm wrestling with the question of how to write about consequential things and tell the truth without doing injustice to my characters. I have no easy answers; I doubt anyone does.

A popular song from some years ago had the frequently-repeated line, "Handle me with care." Nonfiction writers already know the importance of doing this. We who write fiction and poetry need to keep it in mind as well.

The Terrible Path to A New Beginning

My father passed away last Sunday. He'd been ill for some time and I'd convinced myself I was READY. PREPARED. Guess what? I wasn't. At all. Emotions and memories surfaced from the oldest, deepest part of my subconcious mind. Softball in the front yard, flying in the cockpit with him and learning what all the buttons controlled, pranks he pulled, wounds he helped to heal. My father taught me a lot of important lessons about life and the importance of living every second of it. His death taught me something very important about my writing.

In one of my dusty novels---stored in the deepest desk drawer of the house---my protagonist, Miss Thing,  learns of her father's overwhelming financial debt after his death. In order to save the farm generations of her family have called home, she must find a way to pay off the bank. In my novel, the death of her father is nothing more than a device to get the action rolling. Miss Thing doesn't cry much and seems to be completely over dear old Dad by chapter four or five. She's too busy being a STRONG WOMAN who OVERCOMES the OBSTACLES placed in front of her to TRIUMPH and GET HER MAN to grieve her father.

I see the problem with this now. Until last Saturday, I didn't. In the real world---which fiction should mirror--she'd likely be a wreck for weeks. Lots of crying, sobbing, maybe even a few pulls on the old whiskey bottle. Because I didn't understand what she would likely be feeling, I didn't craft a character that came off the page. Now that I know what Miss Thing might feel, I plan to go back and start all over. Add another element to her character, some depth, some maturity. Instead of grasping the real OBSTACLE--namely dealing with her grief over the loss of her father---I merely created one, inserted it and hoped it would work. Now it seems fake, fake, FAKE.

Sometimes we have to experience the feeling in real life before we can understand the emotion enough to write about it. It takes some pain and suffering to get at the real emotions that make us tick.

I didn't need to create a new obstacle. I already had a big one written into her character. I just didn't know how to express it properly so that others could identify with it. And until readers IDENTIFY with some elements of your story, it's not a very good story.