I had a dream in which I was called upon to
give a talk on what inspired me as a writer. It
was a typical anxiety dream; I’m late in
arriving, I have nothing prepared and when I get
there, the venue isn’t a small friendly
writers’ group but a great hall filled with
hundreds of people.
Someone whisks me over to a mirror to have my
makeup done. I take my time choosing a lipstick
from a huge range of colours but finally select
one and apply it. When I look in the mirror, I
discover to my horror that my face resembles an
impressionist painting. Every color available
is daubed, not just on my lips, but all over my
face.
I walk toward the front of the room in a panic,
not only about what I look like but what I’m
going to say. Then as I take my place behind the
podium, the answer comes to me.
What inspires me as a writer?
Memories. Childhood memories mostly, because
for those to stay with me into adulthood, they’ve
got to be strong enough to resonate over the years.
"I don’t have slides," I say
into the microphone, "so I'll have to paint
you a word picture."
Lying in lush spring grass, breathing in
the smell of moist earth. Crocuses, purple and
yellow and white, peek through the tangle of green.
Splashing in warm shallows between sandbars
at low tide, the sky and sea a pale shimmering
blue. Salt and sand crust my skin, tiny flatfish
flutter softly beneath my toes
Perched on the sturdy limb of a cherry tree
surrounded by green leaves and rough bark, reaching
for a cluster of luscious ripe cherries. Biting
into the sun-warmed fruit, savoring the sweet
explosion of flavour as juice dribbles down my
fingers, staining the skin a rich purple.
Writing isn’t simply recording our sensory
memories, I tell my audience, it’s also
about emotional memory. The most vivid are archetypal
feelings that tap into the collective unconscious,
that are so universal everyone can identify.
To create authentic characters, we have to reach
deep inside ourselves and bring forth the emotions
that accompany life events, both major and minor.
The scenes above were associated with the sense
of deep dreamy contentment I was lucky enough
to experience frequently as a child. There are
other memories that even after decades can cause
my skin to heat with embarrassment or my heart
to swell with pride or longing or happiness.
First grade and the mortification of wetting
myself on the way to school. The dark stain down
the inside legs of my leotards. Jumping in a water-filled
ditch in an insane attempt to cover up what had
happened.
Getting up the courage to run up and kick
the ball away from the biggest meanest player
on the opposing soccer team. The triumph when
I went on to score a goal.
The crescent moon and evening star shining
in a twilight sky suddenly overwhelm me with an
ineffable longing; the truth is out there if only
I could grasp it.
The breathless excitement of seeing him across
the dance hall, the fumbling touch, the shy sweetness
of that first kiss.
In my dream, I can see the rapt faces of my audience.
I’ve captured their interest with personal
experiences. But I’m not writing my memoirs,
so what else is necessary to inspire me to the
art of storytelling?
Imagination. We make up characters and place
them in a world of our creation. We give our hero
and heroine relatives, pets, jobs, homes, clothes—in
short, every detail which might describe a real
person. We give them personality and character,
flaws and conflicts. We give them problems and
the strength to overcome them, goals and the inner
resources to achieve their dreams.
Imagination draws on the subconscious, which
is layered with everything you’ve ever seen
or heard or experienced in your life including
events and people you’ve forgotten. Things
you might not even be aware of knowing or thinking
lurk in the recesses of your mind just waiting
for the right character or the appropriate conflict
through which to enter your story world.
Arthur Koestler defines the act of creation as
bringing together or juxtaposing two seemingly
unrelated ideas or objects to create something
new and different. Humor, for example, relies
on the element of surprise inherent in this concept.
Think of Mel Gibson, the macho ad exec who wears
a bra and shaves his legs to find out how women
think. Or Monty Python’s upper middle class
men in business suits learning how to ‘walk
silly.’
Writing is an act of creation. Until we put the
words down on paper, the characters and their
story don’t exist. We exercise our imagination
to combine individual elements in a way that will
illuminate universal emotional truths yet do it
in an exciting fresh manner. We draw on memory
and imagination to create a new world where unexpected
events happen to characters constructed by us
and made real by our own experiences. ‘Voice’
makes our writing unique. It, too, comes from
a lifetime of memories plus imagination, which
we then consciously distill to reflect the essence
of who we are.
The meaning of my dream became clear: As writers
we’re never ‘unprepared’ because
we carry the seeds of our inspiration with us
wherever we go—memory and imagination.
Tap into your subconscious; relive the best and
worst moments of your life, dip your pen in the
palette of imagination and apply all the colours
of the rainbow to your story. Give your characters
depth and breadth and soul. Get inspired and get
writing.
Joan Kilby’s next Harlequin Superromance,
PARTY OF THREE, will be out in January
2006. Visit her at www.joankilby.com
to find out more. Also coming up: BEACH BABY,
Harlequin Superromance, Aug 2006, and IN NAME
ONLY (working title), Harlequin Everlasting,
pub date TBA.
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