Tag: Inspiration

Writing Tip

nypl-digitalcollections-ba309cea-94f2-4288-e040-e00a18066c61-001-wDigging Deeper into Personal History

Even though I get a lot of inspiration from reading about important people in history, I still find intriguing stories within my own family.  Both sides of my family come from West Virginia, meaning I know a lot of stories about my extended family going back generations and I come from a long line of storytellers.

My dad has enough hilarious tales about what he did as a kid in the 1940’s and ’50’s to make at least a trilogy.  My maternal grandfather told all kinds of stories about growing up on a farm with seven brothers and sisters in the 1910’s and 1920’s.  I had a great-great-grandfather die in the infamous Civil War prison camp at Andersonville.  If I wrote historical fiction, this would be a story worth researching.  I have a great-grandfather who worked as a carpenter  in Moundsville, West Virginia, beginning in the 1880’s.  He helped support his widowed mother and a sister and her children because the sister’s husband had abandoned them.  He finally married, or I wouldn’t be here, when he was 47 years old.  His bride was 19, and they had two children together.

Their marriage was always stirred my curiosity.  How did they meet?  Had my great-grandfather always wanted to get married but didn’t feel he could because he was already supporting his relatives?  Did finding a wife come as a surprise?  Why did my great-grandmother want to marry someone so much older than she was?  Why did my great-grandfather want to marry someone so much younger?  What did their families think?  Their friends and neighbors?

Even though their story took a place a hundred years ago, their storyline is so good it can be translated to any time.  Placing it in a modern context would give the characters different reasons for getting married.  Such a May-December marriage would also be viewed differently by family and friends.  There is so much to work with here.  But I wouldn’t want to use my great-grandparents’s names and exact situation and fictionalize it.  Since I didn’t know them, I wouldn’t like to put words in their mouths and misrepresent them.

So ask grandparent, parents, any relatives for family stories.  Not only will you get great writing ideas, but you will gain a connection to your family’s past that makes your family unique.

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Scripture Saturday

nypl-digitalcollections-510d47da-e485-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99-001-wGod’s Blog

This is a speech I wrote to accompany the presentation of Bibles to the third-graders at my church and I wanted to share it because I enjoyed writing it.

How many of you know who your principal is?  Sure, you know his or her name and where that person works, but do you know his favorite food?  Or favorite subject?  What college she went to?  So you know enough about your principal to identify him or her and to say hello but not much else.

Sometimes, that’s all the more we know about God.  We know He’s there and He makes stuff like nature and miracles, but we really don’t know much else.

God wants us to know him as well as you do your mom and dad and best friends. Nothing is more important than getting to know God.  So God set up a blog, e-mail, and Facebook pages so we can do that.

The Bible is God’s blog. In it, God tells us about what he likes, like creating things, and what he hates, like sin.  He tells us about people He’s helped because they got to know him.  God posts all kinds of information about Himself on His blog in histories, poems, and essays.

He also receives e-mails, but when we e-mail God, we called it prayer.  We can e-mail God about anything, even just ordinary, everyday things, and He always responds.

God also has Facebook pages.  Interestingly, God uses real faces for his Facebook pages.  Everybody who believes Jesus saves us from our sins is a Facebook page for God.  Checking out all the Facebooks pages here in our church is a wonderful way to get to know God.

So remember to use all through of God’s electronic formats – blog, e-mail, and Facebook — and you will be working on the most important thing you can do with your life.

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Writing Tip

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Digging up History

I have never been inspired to write historical fiction, primarily, I think,  because I am intimidated by the idea of trying to write about a time in which I never lived.  I worry about getting it wrong and not doing justice to the people who lived then.  But that doesn’t mean history doesn’t inspire my contemporary stories.

I like reading history because it gives me real world examples of how people act and I can use those actions to build characters and their motivations.

As I wrote in a previous post, I have read a lot about the Victorian and Edwardian periods in England.  The relationships within Queen Victoria’s family could inspire dozens of plots.  For example, Queen Victoria was crazy about her husband Prince Albert.  They were both crazy about the oldest of their nine children, Vicky.  They devoted a lot of time and energy to groom and educate her into being the ideal queen consort.  Their second child, a boy nicknamed Bertie, was not nearly as well trained, even though he was in line for his mother’s throne.  Victoria and Albert were very critical of Bertie.  Their third child, Alice, was probably the most original thinker in the family but was overshadowed by Vicky.  She and Bertie were close.

This family dynamic can easily translate into modern times.  Mom is a celebrity CEO of a successful family business.  Dad is her right-hand man.  First daughter, whose personality matches Mom’s, is groomed to take over the family business.  Son and second daughter feel left out and become each other’s best friend in the family.

My historical inspiration doesn’t have to trap me.  I can change it.  I can make second daughter deeply jealous of first daughter.  I can make son a rebel.  By the time I’m through, my story may look like nothing like the historical inspiration, but the history was need to get my imagination working.

If you are interested in reading about the Victorian and Edwardian periods, these books are ones I have read and enjoyed: Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants by Alison Maloney, Victoria’s Daughters by Jerrold M. Brown, and Queen Victoria’s Family: A Century of Photographs by Charlotte Zeepvat.

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Writing Tip

Placeholder ImageOld Photos

I double-majored in history and English.  Some people thought that was an old combination, but I always explained it this way, “One is about real stories.  The other is about made-up ones.”  The disciplines seemed related to me.

I have never seriously considered writing historical fiction, but my friend Sandra Merville Hart does and she has an article on how to use old photos for research. Click here to see it.

I have been interested in the late Victorian/ Edwardian ages since I discovered Sherlock Holmes at seventeen.  One reason, as another writer pointed out, is because the Victorian age is as far back in history as you can go and still find every day life somewhat similar to our modern era.  I’m also interested in it because it was the last hurrah of a way of life that disappeared during World War I.  One of the best books I have read on this period was actually a photo album.  Queen Victoria’s Grandchildren by Lance Salway shows photos with short histories of all 40 of her grandchildren.  The book would be confusing without the photos because it covers so many people.  But the photos also let these people become real to me.  Seeing their faces helps me make a connection to them.  Which is one of the goals of historical fiction.

I won’t be posting again until after Thanksgiving.  I’ll talk more about how history has directly affected my writing.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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