I’ve had the fun of talking to four different book clubs in
the past few months, the result of offering my words of wisdom about indi books,
writing at an advanced age, street people, suicide, and last night we got into
a great discussion about hemp milk. A
paper bottle of the stuff was offered to me and all I could think of saying was,
“How does one milk a hemp?” The group was a lovely set of dieticians and
medical women, and the talk, as we
enjoyed our vegetarian soup and salad, had veered away from pedophilia, my subject, to nutrition, their
subject. It’s not polite to talk about
bad things over dinner.
They had, though, read Graffiti
Grandma and when they asked how I knew so much about all those gritty
things and people in the book, I answered as I always do: “Google, of course.” They seemed disappointed. I had not actually
sat on curbs with street kids or wandered through Forest Park looking for a
family’s camp. And I had no answers for
the homelessness we see on our urban streets. I was a little embarrassed.
It’s true that writers do not necessarily experience what
they write about. Their imaginations,
their friends’ stories, and Google fill in the blanks. I’m thinking of Hunger Games, and maybe Yellow Bird, two authorial flights into
the What If world. My latest book, Not There Yet, is such a flight, as I What-If’d my way into finding a dead husband in my bed on Christmas
morning. Not me, of course. And certainly not Don, I assured him. A whole story was built out of my imagination
and supplemented with Google research into medications that could kill people
without their knowing. Not There Yet
is unfinished. I have a couple of
friends reading it who will let me know what I left out. Don is in a holding
position, opinion-wise.
However, at this moment, I’m riding along on a crest of joy
over the book that came out this month. UPRUSH.
Once an ebook, I needed to touch and smell this story, so I re-titled it, formatted
and published it as a paperback on Createspace, and when the proof came,
despite its small imperfections of one sort or another, it was beautiful from
the day it was born. Inside and out.
It is a book based not on Google research, but on my own
life and friendships. Fictionalized, of course,
the Lou character is not a lesbian, Jackie was only maybe a little infatuated with
a priest, Joan didn’t end up with a philandering designer. And the writer Madge does not have Alzheimer’s,
although indications are that she may be wandering in that direction, my husband’s
lost keys found in my pajamas this morning. The library in the Alzheimer’s
center nearby helped me understand the disease, but that isn’t the story. UPRUSH is focused on a question: How does one
grow old and hold on to herself and her dreams in the process?
Once again, I don’t have the answer, but I’m not turning to
Google to find it.
Back in the day, writing instructors advised writers to write what they knew about. Today that seems to be shifting; today writers are told to write what you are interested in. I continue to be impressed that you are so filled with ideas and have the determination to put these ideas down on paper.
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