I am a people person. I derive enjoyment, relaxation, and most importantly, plot ideas, from being around people. In fact, I think my students have begun to find it sort of a game to see if they can suggest ideas that I like enough to write down in my ‘possible story ideas’ notebook (I have one of those…do you? If not you definitely should). And I have gotten some great ideas from students. I have also gotten great ideas from my friends as we sit around at lunch, or as we talk on the long drive to and from high school camp. I also get story ideas from other books or movies, and lately, you guessed it…real life. Nothing gets the creative literary juices flowing like worldwide disaster. Now wait. Don’t get all indignant. I mean that with as much reverence as possible. Let me explain… For generations literature has been made of human reaction to social circumstance. Consider Fitzgerald and his work on The Jazz Age or Steinbeck and his commentary on The Great Depression. Writers live in society and respond to their times. Their work then informs those around them, and, if compelling enough, impacts the society. Lincoln himself credited Harriet Beecher Stowe with having a hand in The Civil War. This is the cycle I have seen in my own study of literature, and it is this that I beat into my students' brains. An author—Twain, Wharton, Morrison—responds to the world around them through the lens their experience has given them. And their work speaks to that world, and beyond. That is the beauty and value of what I lovingly call “capital L Literature”. It is transcendent. It speaks to its own time, and to others. It is why we still read Shakespeare over 400 years later. So where does that leave the rest of us? The authors that aren’t Shakespeare? Are we somehow lesser? I would say no. J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer, while nowhere near canonical in the eyes of ivory tower academia still speak of and to the people of a generation. My mystery stories, written with my dad, speak of a life experience shared by so many in my generation—raised by a single parent, grappling with difficult to resolve feelings of abandonment, and questioning our value and purpose. And the stories that will be written by writers like me (and by writers like you dear reader, if you are also a writer) about these times we are living in now will be breathed through experience and given life and meaning because of that worldview. Think of it like the rings of a tree…each concentric circle showing a year in the life of that tree. Thin rings speak of hardship and endurance. Wider rings recount times of abundance and growth. And these rings are not just the tale of one tree but of an entire forest in a given time and place. In the same way, authors, good ones at least, teach us what it means to be human…in 1600, or 1865, or today. These stories matter because the lesson matters. These stories endure because the lesson still needs to be learned. These stories resonate with us because these are our stories.
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Wendy Picard GorhamWendy lives and works in the midst of words everyday--English teacher by profession, and writer by passion! Archives
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