Sources of inspiration

One of the most baffling questions a writer is asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” We are talking about inspiration, of course, which often boils down to imitation.

I was at a writer’s salon a couple of months ago. A very enthusiastic new member listened to me read a work in progress, a really short piece about a woman lying on the cement floor of her basement, hiding from her husband but in actuality hiding from this world we are living in.

We bring shorter, messier pieces to this salon. Nothing is very polished, unless it’s one of those rare poems or stories that flies through fingertips to keyboard and needs no revision. So I read this weird little piece about this young woman deciding whether or not to ever get up off the floor and face the world. When I was done, the enthusiastic new member asked, “Where on earth did you get that idea?”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I think I babbled something about how the room/basement in question featured in a novel I’d written before (Gentry spends a lot of time in that room in book two) and for some reason I wanted to write about that room again. Which sounds strange but I think if we tracked back our inspirations we would mostly find strange things, yes?

As an example, I wrote a beautiful poem (that I can’t link to because it’s in a print journal ) inspired by a pdf about the types of grasses most commonly found in South Dakota. I was looking for names for my “real” job, from which I am retired, but as part of it I named products. I always scoured the internet searching for interesting ideas and found this pdf about grasses, and that inspired “Flyover Country.”

So I tried to explain to this man that this strange little room in the basement of a house (where I have never lived) in Oklahoma City (where I have never even visited) just wanted to be written about. Which invests the room with an animate agency that it certainly doesn’t possess, but I associate the weird little room with despair. I was feeling despair over the state of the world (still am btw), and this odd little story is what came out.

I think he thought I was crazy.

Anyway…

Some parts of my life do inspire my fiction, especially where my second divorce is concerned. I process through writing (if you read this blog, you know that) and I poured much of my own pain and grief into The Iris Files. I was completely broken by, not the divorce itself, but the long, desperate, painful years before the divorce, when I was presented with lists of ways I could improve everything about myself in order to avoid breaking up the family.

I think Iris said it best:

            In retrospect, I think that the demands for change were simply a kindness on Hart’s part, a last chance, because he thought that after fourteen years, he owed me that. He was extending to me, as a matter of courtesy, the opportunity to become the woman he desired, in an attempt to save himself the trouble of a divorce and the expense of child support.

            I was unable to accomplish the transformation.

Like Iris, I failed. I was unable to be anyone besides myself. Part of it was my own angry stubborn nature (go me!) and part of it was how widely the list varied from month-to-month. The list of changes I needed to make was extensive and inconsistent, based on whoever caught my ex-husband’s eye at the time. His eye was seemingly caught easily and often.

One of his suggestions was helicopter skiing (that’s in Iris). I should somehow become the kind of woman who wanted to helicopter ski. Cut my hair short, wear small pearl earrings, and crisp pleated khaki shorts. Get my nose fixed. Get a facelift (I was thirty). Take up tennis. Dye my hair blonde. Wear more jewelry.

Being treated as a remodeling project is demoralizing and dehumanizing. He often demanded that I go back to work full time. At what, I wondered? He suggested driving the city bus, delivering mail, or working for UPS. “You won’t be happy until you see me in a uniform, will you,” I said. “You think you’re too good for those jobs,” he answered in an accusing tone. “I do,” I replied.

This dragged along for years. If I’m honest, it was a constant in the marriage. It just got more constant, more brutal, more cold during those last years. He told me I should want to change to make him happy. “If you loved me, you’d want to change for me.” I said, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask.”

I finally said, “Why don’t you go find someone you like, instead of trying to change me?” Eventually, he did. It was awful. It was also a relief.

Lessons learned

How many novels can one unhappy marriage inspire? Way more than two. It’s tricky talking about your marriages, past and present, in a public forum. It’s much easier to hide it in your fiction. The thing is, healthy relationship patterns make for happy lives and boring novels.

I am reminded of a long-ago member of my long-time book group, who would always complain that whatever characters we were reading made bad choices. She would tut-tut away about it, as if we were in group therapy for the character as opposed to discussing a novel.

Finally, I said, “If every one in a novel made healthy choices, we would have no story, no plot, no conflict. Novels would be didactic, like Victorian children’s books about good manners.” She blinked at me for a moment, considering. I’m not sure she understood, and anyway, she’s long gone.

I have procrastinated enough.

I wrote this blog post because I haven’t posted in a bit. Retirement is very, very busy for me. It’s almost grueling, and I’m not sure how I ever found time to work full-time. But what I’m supposed to be doing right now is writing a cover letter for agent queries for a finished novel that has nothing to do with my divorces or that odd little room in Gentry’s basement.

I haven’t queried an agent in twenty years, but I remember how horrible the process is and I would do anything to avoid it. Still, it must be done.

Wish me luck on this agent thing.