How events shape our writing

I'm going to do my best to stay away from politics today, but bear with me if I wander a bit too close to the line. Yesterday was 9/11 and for so many Americans it brought up a myriad of emotions. I'm not going to write about who did what to whom -- we know what happened and we each have our own interpretations on cause and effect. What I do want to talk about is how traumatic events -- be they events that hit on a national level like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor or events that are purely personal -- affect our writing.

I don't know about you, but writing for me has always been as much therapeutic as it is creative. When I don't write for a long period of time, I feel it. It is that outlet for me in much the same way physical activity is. It is the one time I can be totally inside myself and let my thoughts and feelings come pouring out, whether it is in a journal entry or in writing a new book or short story.

But what really brought this home is a project I'm considering going back to. It's one of those toss it under the bed and let it mature or it will never see the light of day sort of projects. You know the ones I mean. It's that book or short story that insisted it be written but, once done, there is nothing you can do at that time to make it into something that can be sold.

Well, this novel is just that sort of thing. Not only is it waaaaaaay too long. We're talking goat-gagging length of almost 250k words. So massive editing needs to be done. Editing on the scale I couldn't have accomplished 2 years ago, much less 9 plus years ago. It is also a split-personality book. And that is where emotional reaction to a traumatic event comes in.

A little background. This book is a space opera. That's what it started out to be and that is what is remains -- even if it is a big, bloated space opera right now. Like a number of space operas, politics played a role in the plot. But it started out as being very much in the background, mentioned only to explain why a couple of things happened. Pre-9/11, it was a character-driven novel.

Then 9/11 happened and I suddenly understood the emotion I'd seen in my parents when they spoke of Pearl Harbor. The feeling of safety I'd known growing up, something the duck and cover drills in elementary school never took away from me. Sure, on an intellectual level I knew there was always the possibility of someone attacking us. You can't grow up during the Cold War and not have that drilled into you. But, you see, I never believed it would happen.

That belief was shattered on 9/11. While the images of the Twin Towers will always haunt me, the feeling I will always remember is that quick spark of fear, of breathless waiting as I stood in line outside the local blood bank that afternoon and talking with several American Airlines executives waiting along with so many others to donate blood. We'd been discussing how strange it was to see no planes in the air. None of us had realized until then how used we'd become, living as close to DFW airport as we did, to the constant sight of multiple planes overhead. Having an empty sky was unsettling.

Then a hush fell over the crowd -- and it was a crowd. At that time, there were approximately 100 of us standing in line waiting to give blood. All eyes had gone skyward and were fixed on a single aircraft flying much too low for comfort. No markings on the plane. All we knew was that it shouldn't be there and it was flying eastward, perhaps toward the airport or perhaps toward Dallas and its skyscrapers. Now, nothing happened and we learned later it was a federal agency plane doing a flyover. Still, that fear, that spark of anger at the thought the horror was about to visit close to home remained.

And it translated into the space opera. A third of the way through the book, it suddenly changed. Suddenly gone was the nice, almost light-hearted romp of approximately 100k words. In its place was a hard-hitting, political novel with too much of everything. But it was what I needed to help process and deal with what had happened that terrible day. And, because I didn't consider myself a "real" writer back then, I finished the novel and under the bed it went.

But it didn't disappear from my head. It stayed on that very back burner all these years, pushing forward from time to time, as if to see if I was ready to look at it again. Until recently, I wasn't. But this past week, those occasional pokes became persistent and I pulled it out. Somewhere in there, between the lame attempt at being light-hearted and the heavy-handed political response to 9/11, is a good book struggling to come out. I can feel it, if that makes sense. Now I have to put butt in chair and bring that book it can be out. That means reading the original and remembering all those emotions that were poured into it and then figuring out the best way to rewrite it. Most likely, it will be from scratch. That's okay. The original served its purpose -- or should I say purposes? -- in that it let me write the story and let me get out and process some of the emotions that ran so strongly through me 9 years ago.

So, do events, personal or national, influence your writing? How do you use your writing to help process or deal with these events? Or am I the only one this happens to?

Inspiration's Where You Find It

This has been a decidedly strange week in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We've set the record for the most snowfall in a 24 hour period with over 15 inches of the white stuff hitting the ground, followed closely by tree limbs, branches and, well, entire trees. At one point, almost 250,000 homes and businesses were without power. Despite temperatures in the 40's yesterday, there is still snow on the roofs in in shaded areas. You'd think someone, somehow moved DFW further north and didn't tell us.

Of course, the snow with all its attendant problems hit just before all the NBA All-Star activities were scheduled to start at Jerry World (for those not familiar with Jerry World, it's also known as the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium.) There were a lot of nervous city and business leaders worried that all their money and hard work getting ready for the activities would be all for naught. But this being Texas, the impact was minimal...so far.

Not to be outdone or forgotten, the Olympics began this week as well. Wonderful opening ceremonies, marred by a 4 minute technical difficulty toward the end. Team USA won 4 medals (1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze) last night. I held my breath with others across the nation as the Koreans made their move in one of the men's speed skating short track events, wondering if they'd push Apolo Anton Ohno out of contention. Then there was the crash and Ohno came through unscathed, capturing the silver medal, tying him with Bonnie Blair for the most medals won by any athlete in the Winter Olympics.

The cap on the week's news was learning that one of the major freeways here had been closed down last night when local police received a tip about a "suspected terrorist". Fort Worth and Arlington police gave chase and the suspect(s) finally crashed out. Before the police could move in, she told them there might be a bomb in her car. The freeway was closed for hours and now, more than eight hours after I heard the first report, there still isn't much information coming out about what happened other than the fact the freeway is open and the suspects aren't terrorists. Still, unconfirmed reports from one of the local TV stations say that one of the suspects has been arrested on several occasions -- once for hanging around one of the local airports not too long after 9/11 while dressed in camos and looking suspicious and making a lot of folks very nervous and another time for brandishing a hand grenade (which later turned out not to be live) at another driver in a road rage incident. She is on the record being against the war.

So what, you ask, does all this have to do with writing? A couple of things. The first is the easiest to identify. All of this has been a distraction -- a very big distraction -- to writing. I wanted to play in the snow. Then I had to cut up the huge limb that fell out of our pine tree out front. And shovel/sweep the front walk. And scratch my head and try to figure out what a person is supposed to do besides play when you have that much snow at one time. This is Texas. It takes years to get a foot of snow, not hours. As for the rest of it, well, there's this evil invention call the television. Or at least to me during the Winter Olympics and, yes, when there might be a terrorist in my backyard.

But there is something more important in all this. Each of these incidents is fodder for the creative juices. The Ohno silver medal race can now be the background of a scene...complete with guys yelling and screaming as the two Korean skaters go down and he skates past them to the finish line. Popcorn flying through the air on his qualifying round as he goes from last place to first, seeming to simply teleport to do so (hat tip to Chris K. for that image).

Then there's the incident last night. I am intimately familiar with where the suspect's car crashed and the freeway was shut down. I've been stuck in traffic there more times than I want to count. I could imagine being caught in the two mile backup and then hearing on the radio why the road is closed and not being able to get off. What would go through your mind as you sat there, wondering if -- should there be a bomb and should it go off -- you're far enough away to survive? Or what if you're sitting at home and you get the call from your husband or wife or child? Even now, as I sit typing this entry, I wonder why the police aren't giving up more information if, as the one TV station alluded to last night, this wasn't a terrorist they stopped but just a local crazy.

From all this, I have a lot of seeds of inspiration floating around in my head. I know at least a couple of them will find their way into something I write. It may be as a background or a passing scene, but it will be there. And that's cool -- at least to me.

So, where do you find your inspiration? Has anything happened this week in your life that you can use as fodder for a story idea?