Bad Choices, by Kait Carson

One of the most popular questions at writer in-person events is “Where do you get your ideas?” Every writer has their personal favorite response. The safest is to claim one-hundred percent imagination. The strangest is to claim they come from the idea store. That always makes me think of the Horn & Hardart automats of my childhood. Put in a quarter, pull out an idea—as if. My reality is, well, reality.

 

“Write what you know” is a famous axiom. It’s attributed to Hemingway, and sometimes to Twain, but it isn’t strictly applicable unless you’re writing a memoir. My personal creative mantra is a sign I photographed at a Fort Myers restaurant. Let me point out three things: Not all of the choices I write about are mine. Not all of them were bad choices, simply the result of making the best of a bad situation, and ya gotta do something when you’re hip-deep in alligators. Might as well make it into a good story!

 

One of the most exciting scenes in my novel, Death by Blue Water occurs when Hayden Kent is diving the wreck of the Humbolt in one hundred twenty-five feet of water. Her first stage malfunctions, causing a rapid escape of air from her scuba tank. Her dive buddy has swum out of sight. Hayden’s training takes over, and she makes a controlled ascent while breathing from the tank. Hayden didn’t make a bad choice, but I did. I separated from my dive buddy leaving him fifty feet above on the deck of the wreck while I made the deeper dive to the sand. Writing this scene gave me the opportunity to re-write one of my bad choices.

 

“What if” are two of the most powerful words in a writer’s vocabulary. We take experiences, our own or others, and ask, “What if?” The answer to the question fills novels and stories with scenes, details, and sometimes humor. 

 

Writers, do you use your choices to inform your scenes? Readers, do you wonder how much of the author’s life is in the story?

 

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Write What You Know by Nancy L. Eady

             “Write what you know” is a writing maxim. Like most maxims, it contains truth but is not meant to be taken literally. If it were, the world’s literature would comprise multiple autobiographies, most of which, while fascinating to the authors who lived through them, wouldn’t be nearly as interesting to the rest of the world. And we would be without hobbits, Harry Potter, fairy tales and Nero Wolfe.

            I grew up in a naval family. Until I was sixteen, we moved every two years all over the country (and once overseas).  Right before my junior year in high school, we moved to the well-known naval metropolis of Montgomery, Alabama. I have lived in Alabama ever since, except for a short three-year stint in North Carolina when my husband and I were first married.  While Montgomery itself is a nice sized city (as long as you’re not looking for the excitement of New York City and don’t mind the sidewalks rolling up around 10 on weekends and 9 on weekdays), I also spent most of those years living in small towns of 10,000 people or less.

            In addition, my family has a good sense of humor and funny stuff happens to us. For example, there was the time that the townhouse my mom, my sisters and I lived in had water leak from the bathroom upstairs into the fluorescent light in the kitchen. I was out of state at college,  but my two sisters discovered the problem when they came home from school. They called Mom, who sensibly told them to shut the water off, without realizing they didn’t know how. So she had to leave work early to do it herself, and by the time she got home, she was not a happy camper.  

            After she turned the water off, she went downstairs and studied the light, one of those large industrial flat fluorescent lights with a plastic cover. She decided to try tilting the plastic cover to see if she could get the water to drain into a bucket on the floor. This theory, sound in principle, failed spectacularly in practice and she ended up drenched, with water everywhere but in the bucket. One reason I am convinced God loves me—my two sisters, knowing Mom was upset, looked at each other and fled to opposite rooms in the house to smother their laughter in their bedrooms. Had I been home, I would have laughed immediately, probably not the best move for family harmony.

            Or there was the time my husband and I got ready to sell our house to move to a better school district for our daughter. Kayla had just turned five. The problem with selling our house at that period in our life was the fact that we had two indoor dogs, so we had the house shown by appointment only. While that wasn’t an insurmountable challenge, it did mean last-minute rearranging of schedules when someone wanted to tour the house.

            One Saturday afternoon, we got a call about a realtor wanting to show the house at 1, so we dropped the child and the dogs off at Mark’s mother’s house. Since Mark’s Mom told us not to worry about picking them up until after supper, Mark and I dutifully toodled around for three hours and returned to the house at 4, giving the potential buyers a wide berth. We intended to take advantage of the remaining hours of our unexpectedly free afternoon enthusiastically at home.  About 5, the front door opened, and the (very late) potential buyers and (surprised) real estate agent—well, they didn’t quite catch us in flagrante delicto (if that applies to married couples), but it was a close enough call to laugh about ever since. (And for the record, no, they did not buy the house.) 

            And there is my profession—as a civil plaintiffs’ lawyer who has specialized in research and writing for over 20 years, I possess an unusual skill set, one that has become as much a part of me as the physical traits I was born with, like brown hair and eyes.

            So my “write you know” morphed into a protagonist who is a female lawyer working in a three-lawyer firm in a small Southern town. When her senior partner, who is a father figure to her, is charged with vehicular homicide, she is honor bound to defend him. I use humor to leaven an otherwise serious mystery. Now all I have to do is find a buyer for it.

            What does your “write what you know” look like?

Why I Hate Some People by E. B. Davis

In a blog I wrote last month, I mentioned that I had twisted my ankle after falling into a two-foot deep hole on the beach someone had failed to fill in while I scanned the waves for a drowning tourist. After a month, I was on the mend. Then, the knee above that ankle started giving me nasty pings. Knowing the knee connected by bones and ligaments to the ankle, I figured some of the impact I incurred in the original injury might have affected my knee. Also, in my body’s attempt to get rid of the ankle inflammation that fluid might had traveled up to the next joint—my knee.  After all, I had been walking strangely for a month until the ankle mended. So, I waited it out. At the beginning of August, I again was on the mend. I was planning on getting back to the gym. And then—

I was cleaning a spa located on a deck at a vacation house. As I walked down from the deck two dogs accosted me. The owner, the renter, was nearby. The dogs were aggressive, barking and growling. I said to the owner, “Sir, could you get hold of your dogs?” He didn’t react. He stood there looking at me as his dogs continued to bark and snarl. No tails wagged. It wasn’t until I again reiterated my request as more of a demand that he finally took hold of the dogs’ collars and took them into the house. He could clearly see I was frightened.

I like dogs. I have dog friends, Dinty, a Chocolate Lab, and Berry, a Goldendoodle. There’s a dog on our spa and pool route, Lilah, a Golden Lab, who I love. Oscar, the pit bull who is owned by the Deputy Sheriff living in my neighborhood, stops by when they go on walks. They are friendly dogs I know or have gotten to know since they are well behaved. But I’ve also had bad experiences with dogs I don’t know and who don’t know me. I’m not paranoid, but I am cautious—with good reason. Most dogs protect their territory and owners. It’s instinct. Why don’t some dog owners know and understand this?

The renters were staying for two weeks requiring us to return to the house to service their spa and pool. I thought if we went early, we might avoid the dogs. We arrived at the house, but kept our car in a common area beyond the rental house’s driveway. After we got out our equipment and as soon as we walked toward the house, the owner let the dogs out (with a clap of his hands). The dogs charged us. My husband’s response was to fight—he went toward them and made threatening motions. My reaction—flight—I opened my car door and dove in. As soon as the owner got our reaction, the dogs were called back into the house. I phoned my boss to report what had happened and told her I couldn’t service the house. While on the phone, I looked at the house. The owner and his friend were standing at the rail of the upper deck laughing at us.

It didn’t take more than an hour before my knee started swelling. When I dove into my car, I must have torn or stressed the joint. For what purpose did this happen? To be an amusement, fodder for the renter, who thought it was oh-so-funny that I was afraid of strange dogs. Nope, I don’t hate the dogs—I hate people—the owners. Not all, but I seem to attract sadistic sociopaths.

I’d like to externalize the experience by using it for fiction. But deep down I ask—how can you write about people when you hate them? If you have answers for me, please let me know. I’ve got time on my hands now that I must once again restrict movement to gain long-term mobility.