Getting into Character

I find myself this week back in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco and then climbing the dizzying heights of Pacific Heights and down to Pier 39. Contrasting neighbourhoods. No I have not jetted off to the states again (more’s the pity) but am back in the minds of Frank and Richard in the next novel. It’s already had a fair polish but needs some overhauling and the ending is in my head but not on a page. So here I am back there. What these characters are telling me is I know Frank’s voice really well (ex con, hard but soft) and Rich is more of a challenge as he is a bit of a bumbling prof recovering from a mental breakdown.

So for me to be suddenly back with these guys feels like a real treat. I have done a lot of work on this one but now I think it’s time to get to sorted. It’s pacey and psychological this one, darker too.

Because I’ve been to San Francisco a few times, one in particular on a fact-finding mission for this book, I feel more comfortable than perhaps I Am Wolf where I have never been to Alaska or Moscow. One of things we did in San Francisco five years ago (see I said I had been working on this for a while) was walk in Golden Gate Park, ride the amazing carousel that is in the novel and wonder where a body might be found near the carousel. Yep really. But what you can’t capture from Google earth are smells and the feel of the place. So I also had my notebook and asked what scents I could pick up on — get a feel for the place in the early morning. What I love about San Francisco is the fog, very atmospheric, right?

So I must leave you now to get back into character. While Frank has his issues — and so does Rich although I think your sympathies are with him from the get-go, Frank is the likeable rogue  and so I hope all of that comes across. Well — I will have to make sure it does. Being a writer is like being a character actor.

 

Have a great Wednesday, y’all!

The Glorious City of Bath

Winning the Bath Short Story Award (BSSA) this year has to be one of the big highlights. It knocked my socks off to actually win something and with a story  that had some very personal meaning. It seemed other people got it, it resonated on some level and isn’t that what being a writer is all about? So this is a great feeling when you make that connection. Thanks BSSA for choosing Learning to Fly –– read it here! LINK

Jude, one of the BSSA ladies, also wears another hat, that for Writing Events Bath, so when she knew I work with developing writers and my novel was out this month, she invited me to run a workshop on writing a psychological thriller at the wonderful Mr B’s Bookshop. And I love psychological thrillers, and while While No One Was Watching isn’t exactly that, it is kind of and I call it that if I have to pigeon-hole it and of course it uses many of those devices that tap into the psyche. I  grew up reading and being influenced by such books! So I loved putting this workshop together — a pig in literary mud!

And so last week Mum and I did something we never do, we left Dad in charge of the pooch and took a little trip to Bath, and the Hilton Hotel. And what a treat we had!

This time last week in fact we were  getting ready to set off to the station, although sadly it seems like ages ago now! Want to do it again! Want to do it at lots of hotels and places! Anyone else want to hire me? He he …

The hotel, although not quite as aesthetic to look at as the other Bath buildings, is lovely and central and a very short walk to Mr B’s although we did take a rather convoluted route because the girl at the hotel wasn’t sure! But we found it and around the corner at 3,30 we also found Halls and Woodhouse, the cafe where we were kindly treated to afternoon tea by the lovely ladies from BSSA. So nice to finally put faces to names, I met Jude, Anna and Jane and from Writing Events Bath also Alex.

We had a lovely chat about all things writing and enjoyed the delights of an afternoon tea. Then we relaxed on the sofas before it was time to go to Mr B’s ready for the workshop.

 

Jane (BSSA), Debz (some writer apparently) and Jude (BSSA and Writing Events, Bath)

I had not run this particular workshop before, with a specific genre, but as I pointed out good writing is good writing and many of the things we talked about relate to any genre — good characterisation, motivation for action, sharp narrative etc. However I did focus it on what a psychological thriller is, where it fits in the context of other thrillers and the premise of many of these novels. I will do a blog post about this as I think many would find this interesting.

We had a couple of writing exercises, one writing an opening scene or blurb to see if we could capture the essence of a good psychological thriller. And after the break we wrote a scene with tension, after a discussion of narrative devices.

We finished with a Q&A and I even signed copies of my novel, in fact we ran out of books.

People were lovely and many said it had been very helpful 🙂 I hope that what I showed was that it can be done, we can get published if we work at the craft.

I have sat through many workshops and so I did what I thought I would want from a good workshop, it needs to be two-way, interactive and they needed to know I do know what I’m talking about (most of the time!).  So it helps that I work with lots of writers and I know the common errors! And that my novel was published of course!

I had a lovely time! And am so pleased some of the writers that took part have have found me on Twitter and said they’re enjoying the novel and loved the workshop! Phew!

The following day we did a spot of sightseeing in Bath, the tour bus, the Jane Austen Centre and of course some shopping! Although I bought very little.

A nice meal in the hotel that evening, and  then we relaxed in the room.

The following morning at breakfast, who should walk in but Ade Edmondson, who had been performing with his band in Bath that night. I didn’t disturb his breakfast but I was tempted to ask him if he wanted a copy of my book! I didn’t of course!

So here are some pics guys! I wish I was still there now!

 

 

 

 

That writer person again, who does she think she is?

 

Off to talk to the lovely writing group at Canvey Library this afternoon and you can hear me on Sarah Banham’s show on local radio Saint FM from 7pm, here’s the link: SAINT FM

November 22nd 1963 Where Were You?

Another Where Were You Memory, this time from Abigail

 

That Frozen Moment

 

I was eleven when President Kennedy was assassinated. It was my first term in secondary education at Aveley Technical High School. Aveley was then a village in Essex, not far from Purfleet and the banks of the Thames.  It has now been subsumed under that great urban sprawl that goes by the name of Thurrock. It is not the pleasant and idle backwater I knew as a girl.

It must have been around tea time when we first heard the news. I remember my mother calling out to us kids. I think we were doing our homework. In those days, we older children gathered after tea around our dining room table. There was no watching the television then until every single homework task was done.

‘They’ve gone and shot Kennedy.’ It was all my mother said. She was pale-faced and shaking her head as she dried her hands on her apron. She must have been washing the dishes left over from our evening meal. My father was in what we called ‘the front room. He had been watching our eighteen inch television. Suddenly, in the middle of a programme, the screen had gone blank.

Everyone crowded into the room then but there wasn’t much to see. TV was still in its infancy then and they didn’t know how to respond to this event so they just kept repeating, over and over, the news that President Kennedy had been shot.  Eventually, though, there came another announcement. Sadly, it confirmed what we all we knew: that the handsome young American president was already dead. No one knew quite what to do. The whole house fell silent. It hardly seemed respectful just to carry on.

Much later on, we all crowded round the set to watch the BBC news coverage. It was introduced by a sad-eyed, slow-speaking presenter. They handled disaster differently in those days: there was a great deal more solemnity about it. To make a death, any death, even the death of John Kennedy, into the kind of media fest we are accustomed to witness today would have seemed to be in very poor taste.

Anyway, we watched in silence. No one had very much to say. For us, Kennedys were a fairy-tale couple and here was the magic come undone. I was eleven years old and child that I was the politics of the matter were beyond me. I understood, though, that we had all lost something that might have made the world a better place.

‘He was a good man, a very good man.’

This was my mother’s conclusion. She also felt sorry for his young and beautiful wife. The newspapers, of course, were full of it for days: rumours, reports, speculation; photographs, headlines, a whole nation mourns. Nothing they could come up with, though, came close to matching the power of the moment, that frozen moment in which each one us received and understood the news.

Roll silent credits.

RIP JFK

Making a connection and a Kennedy challenge for you, where were you?

At the heart of good writing is a connection.

That is why I love character narrators so much. I like the reader to hear and feel as the character and not hear the author.

In short stories I like to make that connection quickly so even in 1000, 2000, 3000 words the reader has been in that world for a while and feels for the characters. It takes sharp writing and a keen sense of character to effect that in a short piece. I see the reader as being with the character for a short while, but long enough to care.

In the novel the relationship is allowed to develop and the hope is the reader forms a really strong connection.

I feel as if I had an intimate connection to the characters in my novel for a long time before I let anyone else meet them and now it seems lots of people are meeting them and seem to be liking them. I knew they’d love Lydia! Phew! So it was just the best to hear my mum (yes I know she’s biased!) say she loved the novel so much she was sad it had ended and is now reading it again because she missed the characters! Wow. That was always my hope, but again wow. I hope everyone else feels the same way!

As we begin the countdown to the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, I’d like to invite people to send me a short (say no more than 1000 word) non-fiction piece on where they were or where someone they know was when you/they heard Kennedy was assassinated — be honest but be poignant, say what it meant, how you/they felt, what was happening to you or them in your real lives (like the characters in my novel) and I will select the best ones to be posted here on the blog on November 22nd, say three or four during the day and the person who wrote the one I love the most will be awarded a free signed copy of the novel.

As I say in the afterword of the book, the world only stops a couple of times in a lifetime — for me it was when the twin towers fell out of the sky, and perhaps for a short time when Diana died. These moments are pivotal in our lives and while I wasn’t here when Kennedy was assassinated, it has still influenced my writing. And it’s a moment many still remember.

I’ll post about this again, but get thinking. Send the extracts to: writer@debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk, don’t post them in comments.

Thanks and have a great day!

Believe in your characters … make them ‘shine’ …

I was watching the revered Stephen King on BBC Breakfast this morning, a rare interview and I have to say he is still the writer I would most like to sit down and  have a coffee with.

One of the things that I always say about his writing is his ability to write believable, yet flawed characters. Their success I think hinges on the fact we are all champions of the underdog, we fall for the characters and root for them. And as I tell my clients this is essential.

This message came across loud and clear in the interview I just watched as he prepares for his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep. He was asked about Kubrik’s interpretation of Jack Torrance and the other characters in the film version of The Shining  and he confessed to not liking the film because it was ‘cold.’ He said there was an emotional detachment to the characters that he had not written in his book. In fact he said you have to ‘make the reader fall in love with the characters’. He wants you to feel warm. And he said, I thought interestingly, if the reader roots for them, they care about their plight and it’s easier to scare them. Or as he puts it so succinctly: Horror comes from love.

Great thought and I had something similar scribbled on the notes I have started making for my workshop in Bath on writing psychological thrillers. I don’t write horror per se but then it very much depends on what you define as horror. Salem’s Lot still sits up there as one of the scariest horror books for me and I don’t know I have the ability to scare in that way. But Dead Zone is my favourite because it taps into the human psyche  in a less overtly horror way and this is something I aspire to. In psychological thrillers it’s about taking the normal and creating around it the worst possible scenario, so the horror is real but more ‘of this world’ — so a missing child, a phobia, kidnapped, waking up not remembering who you are … etc. See what I mean?

I wasn’t going to blog about this today but I decided it warranted discussion while it was still fresh in my mind. As a writer I was very influenced by Stephen King, the way he not only has these memorable plots and great stories, but the reader becomes part of that world, wholly immersed and indeed rooting for his underdogs. I don’t think my characters have the issues many of his have, perhaps less disturbed although if I was asked to name one who most felt like a Stephen King character I would probably say my protagonist in Isle of Pelicans, awaiting a rework once I finish I Am Wolf, previously known as the Reluctant Clairvoyant — ex con, moves to San Francisco and the voices are back. He’s a good guy who got lost along the way.

But then again, aren’t a lot of our characters — doesn’t art not imitate life anyway?

While many might knock Stephen King for not being a ‘literary’ writer I still think he writes great stories, excellently and has the page-turnability I need from a good book. So Doctor Sleep is most certainly on my Christmas list.

I can only hope the characters you’ll all meet in While No One Was Watching are anyway near as good as his — but I have a feeling you will be rooting for them …

To whet the appetite …

 

Gunshots silence the world. Kennedy is assassinated. Fifty years on it’s a moment we all remember, even those of us who weren’t here.

But what if that’s not the moment you remember? What if you watched it all from the grassy knoll but when you turned around you have dropped your child’s hand … and worse, much worse — she’s gone. Now people are shouting and parents lay over their children to protect them. But not you. You were so caught up in the moment you forgot your own child. Does that make you a bad mother? Some point and run up the grassy knoll. Others say the gunshot comes from that big old building they don’t even know the name of … yet. But they will. Of course they will.

But you don’t. You don’t do any of these things because you stand still and you stare into nothingness. Your child is gone. But imagine far worse than even that, than even a dead President — imagine your child is still missing fifty years later. And it all happened while no one was watching.

So when people remember where they were and what they were doing when they those gunshots silenced the world — you remember something else. You remember it as the moment you opened your eyes and the world you knew was gone.

But why is Eleanor Boone still missing? What did she know?

Coming November 1^st from @parthianbooks … I have a song composed especially for it to be released next month to go with the book trailer.

And the first edition cover is a special 50th anniversary cover … more on that soon.

Preorder now if you dare … LINK  … when you order King’s latest book …

 

Buy Me

 

Making sure your work is ready …

It’s tempting when you have an agent ask you if you are seeking representation to send him something immediately.

It’s also an unusual situation and one that materialised after winning the Bath Short Story Award. Of course it by no means makes me any closer to being signed by an agent, but never the less is a real turn of events. I did respond of course and said I would sub the new novel when it’s ready and that for me is key — when it’s ready.

But how do you know when your work is ready?

I am a lot better at assessing that now, but it’s all relative — ready within your capabilities at this present time perhaps? What I used to think was ready — really wasn’t. This is why at some point hiring the use of a critiquer or copy-editor is essential to your growth as a writer. And why I can’t stress enough the importance of time in honing those skills and in my case acquiring those publishing successes — I think I have about reached 20 short stories published in books now and it means my novel-writing benefits from having reached a ‘publishable’ standard. Of course there is a whole lot more to writing a novel, a whole lot, but if your style, your use of voice, your understanding of good story telling is in place, you stand a lot better chance of writing something great.

I am really happy with many aspects of I Am Wolf and with the story but I am still trying to get the protagonist right. Because she isn’t initially ‘not that likeable’ it’s proving to be a real test, so her vulnerability when it comes does endear the reader to her and it’s essential for the story to have the power it needs. At critique group last might it was very encouraging that this is beginning to happen with my changes and that they seem to think it’s a great story — but that it needs this thing I am struggling to define but seeking each step of the edit. There is some way to go yet — for me to say it’s ready.

The temptation is to ‘strike while the iron’s hot’ and sub it but I will never submit anything unless I’m sure I am giving it the best chance. And it’s not quite there yet for me. There will always be agents looking for something they want to take a punt on, so less haste I say. And I keep saying to myself.

I had hoped it would be ready to sub about the time the new novel is out and that might be the case but it is most likely to be nearer to New Year.

But take heed writers — while we want to gallop that last furlong, don’t. The agents will still be there and the publishers will still be waiting for the next best thing to come along.

Give your work the best chance. Your stories are your children. Don’t send them out without a coat. (And oddly that metaphor is a leitmotif in I Am Wolf.)

Be ready people. Be ready.

No particular reason, I just love this …

What we have to say … and another first for me …

It was clear to me in the months after Lee, the love of my life, passed away (and so young too) that the profound effect of such a life-changing event was going to seep through into my writing. I had seen its effect in others, in the kind of poetry they wrote, the stories they wrote. Now it’s true to say, as writers, we often like to dwell on the sad and the painful and that’s why I so often suggest the use of pathos, the sad and the funny side by side.

So I guess the idea of missing someone did come into my writing a lot and probably still does, but it’s different now, less raw, more humorous.

Some of you will have read the story that won me the Bath Short Story Award, Learning to Fly, and indeed, as you may have read in my interview, it did take many elements from personal experience. Read the interview and the story here if you haven’t:

LINK

Of course I also made sure, as you’ll read, the story had a message — and one I will repeat here in case anyone reading this needs to hear it. Things do get better. They really honestly, truly, do. So the story itself is a metaphor for coming to terms with grief.

In the same way Rats In The Attic, that won the Sunpenny Press competition some time ago, also dealt with a child coming to terms with his sister’s illness with humour and hope.

When we have lost everything — we always have hope.

Hope is the last thing to die.

A story I also wrote around this time was one that has a darker edge but still ends with hope.

It’s called Rush Hour. It’s in essence how a girl deals with the suicide of her friend, but I like to think it’s a whole lot more than that. I felt, when I returned to work after Lee’s death, that I was trapped in a job and a life I was desperately unhappy with. But at such a difficult time it was hard and perhaps ill-advised to make life-changing decisions. Because we’d worked together, at least in the same place, I had a whole other hurdle to climb. But I always believed, and still very filmy believe, that life is too short to waste a single day of it doing something that not only doesn’t make you happy — but makes you  darn right miserable.

We need to eat,  we need to breathe. We need to pay the bills — so it’s far too idealistic to say walk away. It’s not Hollywood, it’s real life, right? And trust me I know what’s it was like when I once had a brief stint of claiming jobseekers. I hope never to have to do that again! But I hung in there, somehow, clinging to the dream I knew one day would be my escape. And it was.

In the words of a proverb that came of a fortune cookie (and found itself pinned to my notice board once): Success is your best revenge. And now, well  I somehow created the dream job for myself. Sure pennies can be so tight I live on beans on toast (I love beans on toast!) but gradually that is less and less the case and I am so happy. Richness is not measured in pennies, but in quality of life, right?

So, why all this preamble? Let me tell you. I saw that old life as being part of a rat race — I always had this crazy notion I wanted to turn around on a busy street and go the other way. Be the exact opposite to everyone else.

Rush Hour is the story of just that. Choosing to live. And like the girl in this story, she learns from what she saw happen to her friend — life really is short — so take a chance — while you still can.

So that’s my message for this Friday morning.

And why is today another first? Well Rush Hour was selected and TODAY has been published in a literary journal! And being published in such a prestigious place really is a great honour and a first! I hope of many!

Here is the link and you can read Rush Hour on page 65, my bio at the back. Looks like there are some great stories, poems and art pieces in here so there’s my weekend’s reading.

What a year 2013 is.

And the best is yet to come. That my friends, is my motto for life. Wave the banner, print it on the t-shirt. And the best is yet to come …

Cannot wait to see wait to see what 2014 will bring but it promises to be even better.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

 

Read me …

 

 

I have a dream …

… that one day my stories will live in the hearts and souls of millions (but if I change the way one person sees the world I will have succeeded as a writer).

 

{Truth in Fiction Series}

THE THIRD IN A GROUP OF UPCOMING POSTS ABOUT THE INTERPLAY OF FACT AND FICTION IN OUR WRITING. IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE, WOULD LIKE TO OFFER A GUEST POST — PLEASE EMAIL ME WRITER@DEBZHOBBS-WYATT.CO.UK

***

 

I had to write a post today that featured Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his iconic I Have A Dream speech. Like many of the great and fallen heroes he has and continues to inpire and his words will be heard and spoken many times today I don’t doubt.

It could well have been that instead of my debut novel being the Kennedy one, Colourblind was honoured on this day, but it is a novel I know will be reworked soon. It has to be.

My very first attempt at a novel was my American Indian As the Crow Cries saga and while I don’t anticipate it ever seeing the light of day, the short stories woven into it did spawn a few later short stories that went on to be published. All the stories were originally supposed to represent visions of the way the world would change and all loosely connected with crows, be it simply leitmotifs or names or theme. And the story that was dying to be turned into something more than a short was Colourblind. It was left out of my feeble attempt at a first novel for that reason, but the crow symbolism here was not just a bird or a warning of death but the very real and appalling situation in the USA that came to be known as the Jim Crow era.

This novel has a very important message alongside a mystery that had to be solved and very strong tie-ins to the Civil Rights Movement in the US. I don’t know why I chose to write about it, this little white Essex girl, but then again, it needed to be written, just as Martin Luther King  Jr. needs to be remembered. And to see how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.

I learned a lot writing that novel and I have promised myself that when I finish I Am Wolf I will have a look at how to make this into what it always needed to be, but I was just not a good enough writer. Let’s hope I am now.

Of course I did use the lessons learned in that early novel when I crafted While No One Was Watching, including an African-American protagonist and clearly no story about Kennedy is complete if it does not give mention to the civil rights movement or pay some homage to MLK and in fact having a black President. And I do indeed have those elements woven into the novel.

Let me tell you a very idealistic but magical story about Colourblind and forgive me if I have talked about this before. There is something quite special about Alice — the little girl in this story but I won’t tell you as it will lose the magic of the book when (let’s always be positive) it is published.  But  it has very strong tie-ins to this post and I always visualised a place in the prologue (set in the future) but returned to in the epilogue. I saw a grown up Alice meeting her old teacher and George who plays a very important role in the story. I saw roses of all colours and a waterfall. I had no idea where the place was but I saw it in my head so clearly.

Long after the novel was finished I needed to rework this ending and I found myself on the internet and by some serendipitous wrong click I was staring at the place. It’s real, it’s in Atlanta where the story is set and it’s exactly how I saw it. Some cynics might say I knew this place existed and it isn’t magical at all — but all I can tell you is I had goose bumps the size of Georgia and I knew. I just knew someone was whispering in my ear and that that one day I would succeed with this story. That became and still is my dream. The place is called  … maybe I shouldn’t tell you. Maybe it will spoil the ending.

But I  did promise a friend when the book is published we will go there. For sure. And I have never forgotten that promise. Maybe they’ll even sell the book in the bookstore there!

So what are you dreaming today?

Only you have the power to make those dreams come true and that special person whispering in my ear is still there … so it has to come true, doesn’t it.

Never. Stop. Believing.

The In Between

I invented a place called the In Between where you find lost socks and missing keys.

It’s also where the tooth fairy hangs out with Santa and the Easter Bunny. God there’s too sometimes.

You might even find a ghost or a lost soul there once in a while.

It’s a world on the edge of this one and not quite in the next one.

It’s where I like to hang out with assassinated presidents and missing children, feral kids and brothers killed in Afghanistan. And the longer I hang out there, the more I learn.

But I see this place only as the waiting room; the bridge between what is and what could be. I dip in for a while and then I create a new existence. I shift the boundaries between the possible and the impossible, between truth and lie, between what is and what is not.

And now these worlds live in your head, but even between heads this place is not the same, and you might even dip into the In Between yourself and shape the very world I gave to you.

Welcome to the place where dreams are dreamed.

Where a fiction writer likes to hang out.

Where everything and nothing is possible all at the same time.

Welcome to the  imagination of the fiction writer.

This is going to be an AMAZING week … I feel it!

In the ashes, when inspiration comes from the saddest places …

{Truth in Fiction Series}

The first in a group of upcoming posts about the interplay of fact and fiction in our writing. If you feel you have something to contribute, would like to offer a guest post — please email me writer@debzhobbs-wyatt.co.uk

***

Last night I watched a 9/11 programme.

September 11th 2001, as I say in the afterword of my novel, is one of the two events in my lifetime that seemed to literally stop the world. What made it all the more poignant was that I’d been a visitor to the World Trade Center just five weeks before, in fact my dad still had, at the time of the event, a message from me on the answer machine saying I was at the top of the world.

I was off work that day in 2001, studying I think, when Dad called me just after the first plane hit, at the time we thought it was an accident. But we watched together as the second plane went in and a third in Washington and for several horrifying minutes we thought the world was under attack. I remember it so clearly. It dominated the news for a long time, and after the horror came the clean-up, the death toll and finally the stories of hope and reunion and the stories of loss and grief.

I think the image that has always stayed with me, apart from watching the towers plunge from the sky and tear a gap in the NY skyline, were the people falling — jumping to their deaths. I still remember a long sequence shown on the news set to music with a list of names that fallers and how heartbreaking that was.

As I sat there last night, almost twelve years on, I realised how much this moment must have affected me and spilled into my writing.

Not that long after I wrote a story called Airport. Not something that was ever published, only in the local writing group magazine, focussing on three characters catching a plane, one in particular an old man leaving behind his life in New York after his wife died to move to his sister’s. Another was a young woman eager to tell her parents she and her husband were pregnant, and another a loud family with kids and a beer guzzling husband who might not be allowed on the plane. It  cuts to a scene at the end with the old man arriving back at his apartment, TV set on as the new breaks the plane he wasn’t able to catch, to leave behind his old life in New York, is one that crashed into the twin towers. And the question that resonates — who did catch the plane?

Later I wrote a story, now published in a US collection, called Stepping into Silence about a girl who never has the courage to follow her husband’s sky diving example (he’s an instructor)– we see her at Victoria Falls, various other places, him saying “Go on, Pumpkin, you can do it. Close your eyes. Just jump.” But she never can — not until she has no choice on that fateful day.

Later I also had a story published called Fallen in the Voices of Angels collection about a fallen angel who is trying to work out who the child is she watches on a swing, the old woman who takes care of him and the doctor she shadows in an Emergency Room, until she finally realises what happened to her and why she is an angel — she died on 11th September, she jumped.

Later still I wrote a story, yet to find a home, called Director’s Cut about an old movie director’s last day and which ending he will use for his fireman blockbusting trilogy — and you guessed it the last movie is a 9/11 movie.

It was a realisation last night about how this single event has inspired so many stories from me alone and who knows that a novel might not be born from one of these or more likely something new.

Some might think writers who use real events for stories are in a way cashing in on the tragedy — well from a financial viewpoint — er no! But I think most realise that these stories need to be told. I suppose for me it was a way of dealing  with what happened and creating something that touched me and I hope others, tinged as I so often do, with hope — rising from the ashes.

I see my role as a writer as trying to make sense of a world that often feels so nonsensical.

Something happens and we watch and we feel the pain of it, but we’re still here and we’re still breathing — one minute later, ten minutes, a day, a week, twelve years. And that’s how we cope, every day. But if we didn’t find a way to express that maybe we’d burst.

If  we can’t write perhaps reading becomes part of the same thing? Another way to look at the same story, only in fiction, while it never pretends to be anything but fiction, I think we can make an even deeper connection; deeper than  is reported as news because we live in that moment with that character — the old man who can’t get on the plane, when the others did, the young woman who hears her husband’s voice say. “Do it, Pumpkin, just jump” as she steps into the silence and the woman who realises it’s her son she watches on the swing, her mother who takes care of him now and his father she watches in the Emergency Room … now these fictional characters become real. And so do the stories — or that for me is what it’s about.

While the stories might be fictional, I like to think they carry truth. And in that truth we all find a connection.

I will leave you with the ending of Stepping into Silence …

 

I hear a saxophone: John Coltrane, ‘Say it over and over again’ is playing. It’s playing so loud it blacks out everything else. Even the fear.

Something falls in front of me. That’s when I close my eyes. The smell gets to me now: hot, metallic.

“Sorry, Ritchie,” I say. “Live every day for me.” This time the words catch in my throat. Burn. It’s just a regular day, you’ll be getting to the airfield now, checking the parachutes, hearing about the airplane that just crashed into the World Trade Center. You might even be trying to call me on my melted cell phone, hoping I fell back to sleep, hoping the car wouldn’t start. Hoping I called in sick. Anything for it not to be true.

“I’m ready,” I say. “Next time you jump, Ritchie, remember I did it for you.”

“What you waiting for? JUST JUMP!”

I hear your words in my head, I hear them above the sounds of John Coltrane. I hear them one last time as I step into the silence.

 © Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Rattlesnake Valley Publishing

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