Sometimes, inspiration for novels comes not from the full on imagination of my overripe and often bizarrely tuned mind.  I envision, dream, conjure, and then pull forth from that synaptic place a story.  Often, though, a novel comes from the world around.  I find tantalizing newspaper stories; I overhear conversations; I read articles.  And then, a story starts to grow. 

The time between finding the inspiration and the actual writing can take a while, though, scraps floating around my desk for months, years even.  My third novel When You Go Away was based on a clip I'd kept in my pencil drawer for a few years, the story about a mother who abandoned her disabled children.  I'd open the drawer, rummage for a pencil, see the article, notice the woman's sad face, her orange jail jumpsuit, and slam the drawer short.  Finally, I wrote a short story based on it, and then eventually, I moved the story to a larger canvas and the novel appeared.  It was not very like the article at all, but something about the woman's face, the way she avoided the camera, never left me, inspiring me for so long until I did something about it.

My first novel Her Daughter's Eyes likewise came from such a scrap, a short, two paragraph filler story about a girl who hid her baby in the closet when she went to school.  Pencil drawer open, pencil drawer closed.  I end up in a class where I am forced to write a scene where two characters are keeping secrets from one another and that's the story that popped into my mind.

For about two years, I've had this conversation written down on a pad of paper, a pad from The Washington Court Hotel in DC.  I read this bit of dilaouge in a police transcript, spoken by a three-year-old boy:

Mommy was crying.

Mommy broke the table.

Mommy's in the rug . . .

This woman was beaten and killed by her boyfriend and then rolled up in the carpet and taken away, the child left behind.  While I feel terrible for the mother, it's this child I can't seem to forget, never throwing away this little bit of his horrible recounting, and yet, no story comes forth.  Maybe this saved bit is just too much to be born.

But who knows?  I collect the scraps, write down the tidbits, wonder what it all means.  And one day, I will find myself writing, using the bits and pieces, changing them, morphing them into a story that I need to tell.

Jessica