twovictorianladies

You never know which of your life experiences are going to appear out of nowhere and affect what you write.

One of my almost-finished novels has a major character – the hero, in fact – who was in a car accident at the age of 9. The accident was caused by a drunk driver, my character was the only survivor of the accident other than the driver who caused it, and it left him with permanent injuries. You need to know that to see where I’m going with this.

The other day I was facebooking with a friend who was telling me about a tragic accident in her town. In sympathy, I shared a memory of an accident that occurred in my town when I was in high school. The high school and the middle school were across the street from each other; the main parking lot was outside the middle school but the gym was in the high school. So you had to park on one side of the street and cross to get to the basketball game. The crosswalk was about two thirds of the way down a rather steep hill.

After a game one December night forty years ago (aaagh…I never should have stopped to do THAT math!) a crowd of people – students, parents, younger brothers and sisters all – were crossing the road back to the parking lot. Everyone was happy; we’d won the game. It should be noted that they were crossing legally. Out of nowhere, a car came over the crest of the hill, driving much too fast, and plowed right into the crowd. Two students were killed, several others injured. It hit our small town hard. I still know the exact date of the accident and the names of the students involved. I don’t think any member of the classes of 72, 73, 74 or 75 will ever forget those details. This is not a memory that sinks into the background – while I’ll go for months or even years without thinking about it after all this time, it’s never left my conscious memory.

I was describing this accident to my friend, when a random thought crossed my mind – “Sort of like what happened to Josh,” (Josh being my character).

Thwack! Right upside the head. This is a book that is all but finished, and a memory that’s never quite out of mind, and never once before did it occur to me to tie them together.

I’ve always known that I use my writing to deal with what’s bothering me. I do that consciously. I sometimes sit down quite deliberately to fictionalize my problems. I had done that with this book, only I’d intended it to be an entirely different issue. And to some extent it did, but I’d been surprised by how much Josh had to say. He hadn’t been initially intended to dominate so much of the story. But of course my unconscious or subconscious or whichever it is would use this memory given the opportunity – why had I never seen it before?

It’s all out there, folks. The story will take whatever it needs out of your life experience, and use it to its best advantage. This book is quite possibly the best thing I ever wrote, or will be by the time I’m finished with it – I just never realized before where it was coming from.

Still shaking my head.