A New Chapter

Life is always changing and yet, our days are often repetitive and much the same. We get up, have our beverage of choice, shower, and dress for work. After the day job is over, we change into our comfy clothes and make dinner, clean up the dishes and veg until bedtime. Relaxing with a book or watching a movie are my favorite veg activities. If I have energy left after dinner, I like to putter in the garden or write. Lately, I've decided to dust off my art supplies and start sketching and painting again, too.

Where do I find the time? Where do I find the energy? Most days, I run out of gas after the job is done. But in thirty days that will change, and I will start a new chapter in my life. I will be laid off from my job and able to consider myself retired.

When we write our stories, we try to leave the reader anxious for what happens next. Life is the same. While I have plans, life does tend to "happen" organically on its own. Stories develop naturally as well. Isn't a novel or story just living on the pages? Isn't each chapter something new to challenge the main character?

Perhaps that is why we love reading and writing so much. With each new book or chapter, we get the chance to see what happens next. From our imagination and life experience, we can create anything on the page. We can dream of new worlds and imaginary scenarios and make them come to life in a story, or song, or painting.

I anticipate that being retired will allow me to dream and create even more. Time will once again be less occupied by the day job and open to more creative endeavors. I've been writing for almost twenty years of the forty-five years I've been working, and it's been a challenge. I look forward to mastering the discipline to sit my bottom on the chair and write more.

And I'm hoping that by reawakening my artist side I'll find new ideas for the stories I like to write. Getting out of the home office more often will also give me exposure to more people, places, and things. Thus, more writing fodder.

I'm very anxious to start the next chapter of my manuscript and my life. Let's all enjoy the journey, shall we?

Your comments are truly welcome.

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When parts of your life creep into your fiction, by Susan Oleksiw

Soon after my second Mellingham mystery, set in a small art college, was published (Double Take, 1994), a friend said she and her colleagues at the nearby art school had read the mystery and were now trying to figure out who was who in the book. I was startled and quickly reassured her that no on in the school was in the book. This was not a reaction I expected, and since most of the characters in the story were unattractive, as suspects in a murder case often are, I wanted to reassure my friend that this was not how I saw them.

Some writers mine their lives for plot or characters, rewrite what is real in their lives, and never raise any suspicions. I'm not one of them. I work hard to keep my life out of my fiction, and the purpose of one of my read-throughs is finding just this kind of problem--a scene that recalls an experience that seems obvious to me, which means a rewrite, or a character who is far too close to someone I know casually or at a distance. I might wonder how these elements got into the book, past my vigilant eye, but there they are and out they come.

My friends and relatives have a right to their privacy, and while some writers believe anything a writer comes across is fair game, I don't. Children are especially vulnerable, and I cringe to think what it must be like to grow up and see yourself in a parent's or sibling's book. I wouldn't like it but I know that some others don't mind.

After the publication of my third Mellingham mystery (Family Album, 1995), several friends asked pointedly about a certain character, convinced that he was modeled after a specific person. He wasn't, and once again I was unprepared for the reaction. I thought I'd invented everyone in the book, with nothing matching any living person.

This has been less of a problem in the Anita Ray series, set in South India, even though I send copies of the books to friends there. For the fourth book (When Krishna Calls, 2016), a friend was so pleased that I had captured perfectly the problem of village loan sharks that he insisted on writing a review. He articulated my deeper goal, which is to capture the experience of the people and a place rather than copying a real person. I understood the world of debt among the lower castes because while I lived there I was regularly approached for money by those who worked for me. One woman took the time to explain how the system worked in her part of Kerala. But she is not in the book.

Despite all my care in keeping details of my personal life and those of others I know out of my fiction. I'm beginning to accept that this is not always possible. Whatever story I tell comes from how I see the world, from personal experiences in which I figured prominently or sat on the periphery. But I was there and I played a role. I can't disguise my worldview, and that inevitably means I'll explore the lives and behaviors of the kind of people who are part of my experience. But I'll remain cautious about a scene or character that comes too easily and seems too familiar, and in the final read-through (if not sooner) I'll edit out anything that I recognize as taken from a specific life.

To find Susan's work, go here:

https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Oleksiw/e/B001JS3P7C

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/SusanOleksiw

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/susan+oleksiw?_requestid=1017995