Life Imitates Art

Martha Reed is the author of the John and Sarah Jarad Nantucket Mystery series. This is her first post for WWK since joining our staff last year. Welcome, Martha.

E. B. Davis

I grew up in north central Ohio, where the lake effect winters are cruel and the snow gets waist deep. Being more of a lizard lazing on a hot rock type of personality, I spent six months a year buried in books to escape the bone-cracking climate. The grade school librarian became my best friend. I’m dating myself, but she put me to work sorting Dewey Decimal System cards for the catalog and manually revising the date on the return slip rubber time stamp. It was a heavy responsibility for a fifth grader, but I loved it.

On weekends, I created imaginary worlds. I distinctly remember sitting at my mother’s desk and writing a story about captaining a clipper ship. To this day I have no idea why or even how that particular idea generated. Growing up in Middle America, I certainly had no idea of ever living a coastal life.

Life moved on, and I made my choices. Occasionally, when I was forced to do so by random chance, I experienced a burst of creative possibility and imagined an alternate reality or choice, but it never occurred to me to actually use my imagination as a “life changing” tool. I went about imagining all of these life-changing possibilities for my characters, and I never considered using it on myself.

Decades passed, and then - suddenly - I neared retirement age. I’d taken care of the kids, and my parents, and funding my 401(k). What was my next personal plot point going to be?

I knew I wanted to live somewhere warmer; that was a given. I considered North Carolina. Charlotte was trendy and fun, but too small. Charleston, SC was charming, but too expensive. I crossed another state line and toured Savannah, but no. Still not right.

And then my writer’s life offered up an idea. On Day Two of Bouchercon 2018 in St. Petersburg, Florida, I stepped out of the gorgeous Vinoy hotel for a breath of fresh air, since the crime fiction authors were stacked three deep at the bar and the oxygen supply was running low. I stood in the park studying the marina, a salty breeze tickled my ears, and it clicked.

This. This is where I want to live.

My next thought was: ‘I’ll move here when I retire.’ And the little voice inside my head that I’ve been trained to listen to, said: Why wait? If this is what you really want, do it now.

I alternated between hope, wonder, and fear on the ride back to Pittsburgh. I want to do this. Do I dare? I gave the idea a solid week to burn off. You know the drill. Of course I want to move to St. Pete! I had a great time. It’s vacation head. I wasn’t sure I trusted the feeling. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself.

It didn’t burn off. So then, I thought: Okay. How do I do this? How do I uproot my whole life, because I’ve never ever imagined that my Book of Life would have a Florida chapter in it?

And my imagination stepped in. Instead of focusing on why it couldn’t happen, I started to imagine how it could. I needed a job; LinkedIn helped me find one. I needed a place to live; AirBnB offered weekly rental apartments until I got a permanent address. I needed a car. Crown Honda was delighted to lease me one.

For every objection that I raised, for every roadblock I built, my wily imagination found a way to prop the door open, if I was bold enough to step through. On January 7th, I celebrated my one-year anniversary of St. Pete Gulf Coast living. It’s been splendid.

Turnabout is fair play. My imagination is now challenging me to use this new attitude on my writing. Each morning when I sit down to my manuscript, I’m pushing my imagination into deeper and darker possibilities, pursuing my quest for the light, trying to make the story more fearlessly meaningful. I used to work at making things pretty. Now I want to make them true. I love what I see coming up in my editing draft, and I’m hoping my readers will love the new me, too.

What’s the short answer? Sometimes, the only person stopping you, is you.

Do you have a similar tale to tell?