Sunday, November 4, 2012

The Most Important Story I Ever Wrote

There was a story I read at age nineteen that was only about four or five pages long. I don't really remember the story very well now, but what I do remember was that it had a powerful emotional effect on me. The ending was so poignant that I sat for a full minute just absorbing it. "Wow," I said, and kept saying. "Wow."

When I finally came down off this bit of amazement, my first thought was: "If I can write just one story, which can make just one person react to it like I just reacted to this story...I'll count myself a success. " Of course, I imagined that someday I'd have some brilliant, earth-shattering idea for such a story, and, knowing how pivotal it was going to be, I'd spend years carefully crafting it into: the most important story I ever wrote.

Life being what it is, however, that isn't how it happened. Not at all.

Here is how it happened: I was chatting online with some romantic story readers and ideas were floating between us. The talk turned to romances between someone attempting suicide and the person who stops them. Such romances have always intrigued me, and I was captured by one thought of a girl on a bridge and a guy who stops her by asking her out on a date. Of course, she would have to accept or there'd be no story--but what would that date be like? And why would anyone step back from killing themselves to go out on a date?

Come to that, what had made the girl suicidal in the first place? I knew she had to be serious about this. Not depressed and attempting it, but intent on doing it with this pause in plans a mere day's reprieve, an interruption, no more. Otherwise, the story wouldn't really mean anything, at least not to me. Which led to the other question: what about the guy who stops her? Why not grab her or try to change her mind? What appeal could he, as a person, offer a bleak and desperate woman in the middle of leaving this world? And what appeal did she have for him? Why ask her out on a date? I asked this last question of one gentleman romance reader and got a very interesting answer. Interesting enough to get the creative juices flowing.

The story, as they say, wrote itself. I almost felt as if I was watching the characters go on their date, and that I was getting to know them as they got to know each other. The date was prosaic, predictable even in how it progressed, but the twist, the circumstances behind it and the two troubled people involved, transformed it into something more. On most dates the couple feels separate from the world, in their own little universe. These two didn't merely feel that way, they were that way. And the reader was right in that universe with them. Maybe that explains what happened next.

At the time, I didn't even think about any of this. I just wrote it. I liked the story very much and was especially proud of my double-entendre title: "Till Dawn." But I wasn't expecting anything special when I finally put it out for people to read.

Then I started getting feedback. Some of it was the usual: "Great story," and "Liked it, but..." etc. However, the majority of the feedback was completely different from any I'd ever gotten before. "I was that girl on the bridge--" one said, and "I'm Cal. I've felt exactly like him--" It seemed I'd found some universal truth in myself that I hadn't known was so universal. And then there were the ones that really stunned me....

"I'm going through a terrible time in my life; this story helped me decide to go on living..."

Oh. My. Gosh. Had I done it? With this little, erotic romance? I'd written it with care and thought, yes, but not as if I was writing something that would transform lives. Yet it seemed it had transformed lives. Was this it? That story that had readers sitting there for a minute afterwards just saying "wow"?

I couldn't say for sure. What I could say was that after seeing such comments, I totally understood what it meant to feel that one's work had come to life and walked away. "Till Dawn" no longer belonged to me, it belonged to all those readers seeing themselves in it, finding powerful meaning in it.

That's when I realized what "the most important story I ever wrote" really is to a writer. It's the story that people say is the most important story they ever read. And I...I had written one of those for at least some people out there. Much to my surprise.

I certainly hope I have more such stories in me. Though they may not start out that way, they become as pivotal and life-changing to the writer as they are to readers.

2 comments:

  1. One of the best stories I ever had the pleasure of reading...I say that about so many of your stories...b/c it is true. But this story, oh this story has a special place in my heart. Thank you for sharing it with us and giving us the honor of publishing it.

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  2. I realize this has nothing to do with the post, but as this is the only way I have found to contact you, please excuse me.
    I was wondering if there was still a way to purchase your book "When Irish Eyes Are Sparkling", since Aspen Mountain Press has threw in the towel. There are still lots of people who would want to purchase it if they knew how.
    Thank you in advance for your response.
    ~T

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