Wednesday, February 17, 2021

A Writer's Words - The Story Of My Stories

Window Over The Sink 
By Liz Flaherty
The Story of my Stories 
How do I start a book? 

Sometimes it’s because I see a building—especially if it’s a deserted one with pretty lines—and I think about what’s happened there. Who’s been hurt, who’s come laughing down the stairs and tripped over the second from the bottom step, who’s cooked a thousand meals in the kitchen at the back of the house. I can hear the sounds and feel the memories and experience the wistfulness of a house abandoned by the people it’s sheltered. 

Other times―actually, most times, I will meet the people first, although I never see their faces. Their hands, sometimes, and their hair. Often their eyes. And there will be something wrong. Dramatically wrong. Usually, with me, they already know each other. They’re best friends or one-time lovers or even former spouses. Because that gives me the immediacy I need as a writer. I have trouble making a relationship born from scratch in the first pages of a book real. I want the people to know where each other’s scars are, who they voted for, and what makes them laugh and cry. That’s just me. 

It gets difficult then, because I have to find out what that “dramatically wrong” thing is, and I have to admit sometimes I go through two or three or four to get to the one that works. (This makes for a lot of hand-wringing scenes, believe me, since I have to scrap all but the bones every time.) 

I write in silence, always, yet much of my inspiration comes from music. Mostly, I think, because I’m married to a musician and have heard his singing voice and his fingers on guitar strings every day for nearly 50 years. Just now, for instance, I heard Vince Gill sing “…I get weak in the knees…” and that will stay with me when I write. 

Halfway, or thereabouts, through the book, I become convinced I can’t finish it, and I go through the tortures of the damned because I have to decide—every single time—whether to go on with the book, start over, stop writing and become a recluse who makes quilts, or persevere. So far, I have always persevered, but I live in fear of the time I won’t. 

The first and last chapters are always the easiest to write. The first one because it’s all new and exciting, the last because it’s my reward for surviving the paragraph above. 

I don’t write fast anymore, and social media plays havoc with my attention span, but I can easily say that I am still happiest when I’m consumed by a story, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s one of mine that I’m writing or someone else’s that I’m reading. 

That, then, is the story of my stories. What about you? Want to share?

©2021 Liz Flaherty All Rights Reserved
Retired from the post office and married to Duane for…a really long time, USA Today bestselling author Liz Flaherty has had a heart-shaped adult life, populated with kids and grands and wonderful friends. She admits she can be boring, but hopes her curiosity about everyone and everything around her keeps her from it. She likes traveling and quilting and reading. And she loves writing. http://lizflaherty.net/

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