Backstory

The First Act

I’ve been writing stories since I could hold a pen, but those stories weren’t always mine.

My handwriting wasn’t this nice either.

I spent my childhood writing sprawling (or at least limping) tales of unicorns, dogs, and dog-unicorns. But my horned and floppy-eared protagonists never really took shape for me. When I wanted them to talk, I would imagine what my favorite cartoon characters would say. Their stories were mostly retold movie plots. No matter how many nifty colors I added to their manes/fur, they always felt like thinly veiled imitations of Pongo, Mufasa, or one of the Ghostbusters.

I was too young for it to bother me much, so the journeys of my mythic canines filled whole journals, interesting only to me and not even the most patient adults.

Mimicking is a fine way to learn. Once you know the shapes of the basic building blocks, you’re better prepared to put them together into something interesting and original. The real problem was, I didn’t do that.

Nothing changed as I got older. Graduating from picture books to chapter books didn’t help. Learning the more detailed breakdown of the rise and fall of decent plots didn’t help. By high school, I knew what shape the ideas should take, but there simply weren’t any ideas.

When my English teacher assigned us to write a mystery, I spent a week failing to come up with any interesting tales. So I shamefully adapted an obscure Sherlock Holmes story, and breathed a sigh of relief when my teacher didn’t notice. I had read widely for someone my age, but instead of inspiring me, all those other stories constrained me. They only gave me more material to plagiarize.

I could form sentences well enough, but my prose lacked any sort of heart. Writing something original, something truly mine, remained beyond me.

In my determinedly liberal arts college, students were required to complete a writing portfolio, no matter their major. I selected a few papers of which I was particularly proud, composed a cover letter, and submitted it to the academic higher-ups. It wasn’t closely graded—they would deem me competent or incompetent or, if I truly wowed them, they would grant me the title of “distinction.”

I wanted that title. I was proud of my ability to choose words, to convey concepts clearly, and even to compose metered rhymes. I wanted someone to recognize that.

But they returned my portfolio with only “competent” scrawled across the top. “Your writing is clear,” one reviewer explained, “and perfectly serviceable. But you’re completely lacking in the essential element of voice.”

At least now I had a word for what was wrong.

The Unrealistic Twist

In the classic fashion of nice, quiet people everywhere, I decided that was fine. I had a long history of labeling situations “fine” and learning to live with them. Anger wasn’t an acceptable emotion according to my parents, teachers, and friends. It was useless at best, and destructive at worst, so we didn’t indulge it. We buried it, and waited for it to stop smoldering. No reason I couldn’t do so here.

So I didn’t have a voice. So I’d never be a writer. That was a childish dream anyway (wasn’t it?) and there were so many other things I could do with my life. I could always read, and get my story-jollies from other people’s work. I had been deemed competent in the English language, and that could apply to myriad careers.

Partially to drive the point home, I became a geologist.

Don’t get me wrong, I love rocks. I love the many sub-sciences that revolve around rocks. I love pondering esoteric chemical observations about the makeup of rocks. And it certainly landed me a solid career. Free rides to graduate programs. Job opportunities in academia and industry. Lots of esoteric chemical observations to ponder to my heart’s content. It was all fine.

Though I did miss writing…

Fortunately, there was something out there to come to my rescue. A field of art that is almost always overlooked, often maligned, and generally underestimated. A field that lends itself to gatherings of artists, meetings of minds, and a surprising mixture of lack of ego and rabid self-righteousness.

I’m speaking, of course, of fanfiction.

Oh yeah. Lots of these.

I couldn’t create original characters. The concept of “world-building” made me break out in nervous sweats. But I could always mimic the work of others. Actually, I had a talent for it, having practiced being a mimic my whole life. Books, movies, TV shows, computer games … I could pick up their characters and plop them down in new positions without having to explain backgrounds or justify what was happening. I could play with the art of others to my heart’s content. I spent years of time and millions of words on it. I loved it.

Somewhere behind the fun, a greater realization lurked. Something about how originality wasn’t the elusive, all-encompassing concept I had thought it. Something that whispered maybe I could manage to strike out on my own after all…

But that greater realization was hard to see though the fun. Before I could get a good look at it, my life took a dramatic turn. It was so out-of-the-blue that I would never have written it into even my wildest fan fics. It was too much of a random deus-ex-machina moment, without any proper foreshadowing.

Rather abruptly, I fell out of the sky.

Toppled

It’s prettier in person.

My husband and I were on vacation in New Zealand, aka the Geologist’s Paradise. We’d had a lovely time tramping around the South Island and taking in magnificent mountains and sparkling oceans. We planned to finish the trip in grand fashion—an aerial tour of some of the filming sites of Lord of the Rings. We soared over the Ford of Bruinen and the Pelennor Fields, and circled Edoras. At the end of the half-day trip, our little plane tilted downward toward a dusty landing strip on the plains of Rohan.

I am neither a mechanic nor a pilot, and a nasty concussion robbed the details from my memory. Somehow, our little plane stalled. The sky dropped us, and the ground rushed eagerly up to meet us.

My husband and I were lucky, or so they told us when we woke up in the hospital. We were lucky simply because we were waking up. Not everyone from that flight would do so.

The “lucky” label stayed firmly attached to me as I set about recovering. From a realistic standpoint, it was true. Yes, I had a broken back and a crushed foot, but after three surgeries and months of physical therapy, I was walking without a limp. Yes, we’d been through a nightmare, but the previously-mentioned concussion meant I didn’t remember enough of it to haunt me. I escaped a massive accident with only a stiff ankle and a rather dramatic scar down my spine (I like to call it my racing stripe).

I was undoubtedly lucky. But I didn’t feel lucky.

For the first time in my life, I couldn’t label the situation “fine” and learn to live with it. Which was bizarre, since there was nothing I could do to change it. I couldn’t go back in time, warn the pilot, and save everyone on the plane. I couldn’t take the metal pins out of my foot and expect it to go back to normal. The situation had to be “fine,” because it was the only situation that could be.

That knowledge wasn’t enough.

Maybe if I hadn’t been such a nice, quiet person, I would have been better at dealing with the anger. But I’d spent a lifetime believing that anger wasn’t tolerated. Bury its flames beneath cool earth, and leave it to smother.

No matter how deeply I buried this anger, its coals would not stop smoldering.

The smoke would escape through the cracks from time to time. Since I didn’t know how to express it, it would show up in unhelpful ways and places. I started useless fights with my husband. I mouthed off to my boss. I’d lapse into long, sullen silences, then cry uncontrollably if anyone asked me what was wrong.

The universe had hurt me. It had hurt people I cared about. And I had no idea how to express my rage.

I maintained enough self-awareness to know that if I continued, I’d undermine all the happy relationships and security I’d built for myself. Something had to change.

Naming Anger

Or in this case, something had to come back—my old favorite escape. I couldn’t express my anger for myself. That would be owning it too closely. But maybe I could find a pre-existing character that would provide me with a safe, acceptable, indirect outlet. Once again, fanfiction to the rescue.

I was searching for anger and resentment, so I started with my favorite villains. But none of them were the perfect vessel for my particular brand of anger. Moriarty was too cold. Sauron, not enough of a character for human emotion. Jafar was just too … too. Besides, I had to try not to completely villainize my anger, otherwise I’d disown it as I had before.

How about antiheroes instead? That seemed a little more promising. I loved the dark, sardonic wit of Tyrion Lannister, Gregory House, and Edward Rochester. But they had the opposite of the villains’ problem. When people wrote stories about antiheroes, they all seemed to soften as time went on. They would inevitably become more loving, accommodating people. Good for them, of course, but not so much for my purposes.

No one suited. Almost without acknowledging it, while only peering at the concept from the corner of my eye, I realized I would only be satisfied if I created my own character, to my specifications. I could borrow traits from those characters I’d surveyed, but it was time to stick them together in my own way.

I named him Theodosius, because it sounded so very improbable. That was all it took.

The next time I felt the smoky anger trickling upward through the cracks, I pulled out my phone, opened a new note, and began to type. I wrote from the point of view of Theodosius, about how anger was hot and cold at the same time, burning through his veins while freezing him in place. I wrote about the world around him, how certain he was that it had been designed to close like a razor-wire snare when he tried to move. He knew the gods themselves had it out for him.

Afterward, I felt better. I hadn’t suppressed the emotion, or expressed it in an unhealthy way. I’d given it a home. I’d given it a voice.

A voice.

The thing I’d been lacking for so long. Had I found it here?

It happened again and again. To my surprise, I had a lot of anger built up after years of ignoring it. Whenever I noticed it, Theo was happy to step in, feel it deeply, and express it in his own dark, sardonic manner. As we repeated the exercise, his words began to take the shape of a story. It wasn’t my story—Theo seemed to know nothing about the technology of planes. But it was filled with pain and anger and conflict. So I kept writing it.

Eventually, it turned into a book. After a seemingly endless amount of rewrites, defeats, and recoveries, it was enough of a book that I thought I might try my hand at selling it.

Almost without looking, I’d written something new. I’d written something that was finally, utterly mine.

Beyond Me

It wouldn’t stay entirely mine, of course. Novels are, in the end, collaborative affairs. To my surprise, critique partners and beta readers all seemed happy to add beautiful bits of themselves to the mix. With their help and their variety, the story only grew stronger.

It’s a bit like the idea of originality. It’s also a collective thing. All great ideas are melting pots of other ideas that went before. But you can combine those old ingredients in different proportions, and shape the resulting dough in new ways. In the end, it will taste of you, and you’re the only you in the world. You can’t help but be original. You can’t help but have a voice.

Sometimes you just need to step out of its way, like I did. Then you add the other voices to emphasize that main one. Novels thrive on many voices. My favorite ones have whole choruses.

A big lesson I’ve learned through all this … my whole life so far, I guess … is that my undergrad writing critic was correct—voices are essential. A voice that doesn’t follow your usual patterns of thought can open up new worlds, or help you see the old world in new ways. They can help you be a slightly different, better person. One who, random example, doesn’t just sit on their anger and hope it goes away.

A voice, a story, changed me.

That’s why I hope to be a purveyor of different voices and different stories. I want to add to the variety of plots and characters in the world, in the hopes that they resonate with people. Perhaps, as I did, someone might find elements in them that they can pick up and stew into delicious new stories, worlds, and ways of being. It’s my own little way of changing my world. In my wildest dreams, it provides the ingredients to help other people change theirs.

Image Credits

All images in the public domain. Click image for links.

"person walking on beach during daytime" by Ashley Batz (@ashleybatz)

"fountain pen on black lined paper" by Aaron Burden (@aaronburden)

"Stormtrooper minifigure walking on the sand" by Daniel Cheung (@danielkcheung)

"waterfalls surrounded by mountain under blue and white skies" by Samuel Ferrara (@samferrara)

"assorted pen lot" by Andrew Seaman