Sunday Snippet: The Imprinting Edition (A Peek into the Writerly Mind)

So many authors I know often talk about how much they love to write and how it seems as though every situation–good or bad–gets filtered through their inner writer. That’s so true. I’m wondering right now if it is a bad thing that even when I am in the midst of chaos and crisis, sickness and grief the writer is still creating–inventing scenes, conversations, and scenarios. I’ve thought it about it a lot as we’ve been in such crisis in our country, and I’ve been trying to decide if it’s something to feel guilty about or not.

I think it’s not. It’s never a bad thing when our gift kicks in, even when it seems as though it’s kicking in at an inopportune or inappropriate moment. Here’s the thing—this is who we are, we writers. We absorb story wherever we go, whatever the situation, and we should always keep the creativity doors in our minds and hearts open … or at least unlocked.

I remember sitting in hospice with my sister Kate all those years ago (God it’s been 11 years since I lost her!) I confess I often created stories about the folks who passed by her room. I didn’t take notes, which I am wont to do too often, but snippets of conversations, expressions, people’s appearances, even words that I probably had no business hearing, but did anyway because the doctor and the family were right outside Kate’s door, got immortalized in my notebook later after I got home. I do it everywhere, watch and listen–hospitals, doctor’s offices, restaurants, the grocery store, in the car sitting in traffic as I chance to glance at the driver next to me and … well you get the picture.

Bestie writer pal Liz and I talk about people we see or conversations we overhear all the time. I recall texting with her when I was in the airport on my way to Montana. It was really early in the morning, but Liz is a morning person, so texting her at seven a.m. wasn’t out of line at all. I described some of my fellow passengers. There was the very old woman with the flowered cane who was waiting to preboard. She was elegant, dressed to the nines, perfect snow white hair, and her lipstick was bright red–definitely a character. When I texted Liz about the too-cool guy in the black turtleneck and tweed sport coat with the ponytail, her answer was, “What’s his story?” I didn’t know then, but he’s surely going to show up in a book one day–either hers or mine. It’s what we do.

When writing is as necessary as breathing, you can’t help yourself. And we shouldn’t help ourselves or feel bad when it may seem that we aren’t fully engaged in the moment. We are engaged, we’re simply imprinting the moment. Not because that particular moment may end up in a story, although something like it could, I suppose. But more because when the time to actually sit down and write gets here, we need a deep well of words, settings, conversations, expressions, and emotions to draw upon to tell our stories. Also, writing about life is what we do. . . even as it’s happening, so to Liz and all the writers I know and love, never hush that writer in you, no matter when they turns up. They are why we are privileged to read your gorgeous and touching and funny and thrilling stories.

Gratitude for this Week: Rain! Hearing Dr. Son play with the Mission Hills Band; Time with Grandboy; Sending off the first draft manuscript of The Cowboy’s Comeback; my BookBub is doing well! 

Stay well, keep speaking up–it’s our right and privilege as Americans, always choose kindness, and most of all, mes amis, stay grateful!

P.S. Speaking of BookBubs (we were, up there in the gratitude)–here you go!  A link to my freebie, Home to River’s Edge. It’s free on all platforms, but only for a short while!