On Inspiration
What Inspires Writers? Some authors publish two or more novels a year; others publish just one in a lifetime. Margaret Mitchell’s one-time Gone With the Wind comes to mind, in contrast to Karen Ranney, one of my favorite romance authors, who has written over fifty novels. Do these two types of author write differently? Do the prolific authors just sit down and write, like a job or business, while the once-in-a-lifetime author, often of a classic, does not? Are the sources of their inspiration somehow different?
In light of my own experience as a beginning writer, but also my observation, I think not. The potential novel in the mind of the writer, whether she writes many novels or just one classic, might be compared to a seed in a fallow field. A seed requires three elements—nutrients, water, and sunlight—to make it grow and bloom. With writers, although there are many influences, I believe that three major elements also inspire them as they create their work—or works—of fiction.
Of course a major element, like a nutrient-rich soil, is the author’s memory of past experiences. As in a kaleidoscope, memories turn in the writer’s mind to create an amalgam of images and situations. They played an important role as I created the settings of Stranger in the Storm. The novella begins in New York City, where Janet, my major female character, has just earned an MFA at New York University. Although for my master’s degree I attended Columbia University, I drew my years in the City, the bustling streets, the exotic restaurants—and later, during my professional career, meetings of the Modern Language Association there—to paint those scenes.
Most of Stranger, however, takes place on the Great Sacandaga Lake in the Adirondack foothills of upstate New York. Janet goes to her parents’ cottage there to write a novel. My descriptions of that cottage and that lake are based on memories of my parents’ lake house. The family dairy farm where Wes, the major male character in the novel, has been raised, is based on the many small farms I remember in the area, especially the one just down the road from our camp where my sister and I kept horses. I hope these settings in the novel will be as real to the reader as they are to me.
A novel’s characters are also shaped by the writer’s memories. Janet is in part autobiographical, an earlier me, though my MA was in English. Jack, the professor she is involved with at the beginning, represents a type of male I have observed—handsome, charming, brilliant, but so above others that he is condescending, autocratic, almost scornful. As for Wes, I always admired the upstate New York dairy farmers I met—intelligent, strong, practical, good men. I am sure I based him at least in part on them.
An author’s personal interest in a subject also plays a role in inspiring her work; perhaps we can equate it to a second ingredient necessary for growth—water. I think of one of my favorite romance authors, Karen Ranney, is an example. It is clear that she is personally interested in history. She usually ends her novels with the facts on which her stories were based. She also knows antiques and architecture of the periods she writes about, creating atmosphere by meticulously describing the rooms and buildings of her historic settings.
In Stranger, my use of split personalities—like in Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—grows out of my long-term (if amateur) interest in psychology. Although not as complex as an actual case of multiple personalities, a person can appear to be one way, then change –in a sort of bait and switch. That is the case with Jack, the professor with whom Janet is involved at the beginning of the novel, who changes from charming to abusive. Janet interprets this change as a “dual personality.” Her experience with Jack makes her ready to think that Wes, likewise, may have such a personality, especially when his criminal brother shows up.
Finally, most authors are inspired by a theme, belief, or lesson they want to impart to their readers, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously. Karen Ranney often writes of damaged or ill people coming back to mental or physical health through love. In The Lass Wore Black, there is a woman with a scarred face, in My Beloved, a man who is an apparent leper.
But my favorite of her novels is To Love a Duchess. The hero, Adam, a widower and former military man working as an undercover agent in nineteenth-century England, experiences love again as he protects and comforts the duchess of the title. Likewise, the widowed duchess, who has been grieving the loss of her little son for two years, is brought back to life by her love for Adam; she is like a threadbare rug, who now feels “the sun’s rays [shining] through the worn fibers.”
Looking at Stranger and the works I have in progress, I would say my theme is that it is possible to find love. Janet, who writes happily-ever-after endings in her novels but has come to feel such love cannot exist in real life, learns that, after all, it can. One could argue that the writer’s desire to present a deeply held belief or theme is the most important ingredient of the work, the sun without which there can be no growth or fruition. Yet all three—memory, interests, and beliefs— play major roles in the “magic” of creation.
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Patricia is from upstate New York, but she’s also lived in Colorado, Texas, and Wisconsin. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of New York at Albany, a master’s from Columbia University, and a doctorate from The University of Wisconsin, Madison, all in English. Patricia now lives in Athens, Georgia, with her Southerner husband, whom she met when they were graduate students in Wisconsin. After retiring from teaching at the University of Georgia, she’s had had more time to garden and travel while renewing her interests in photography, history, and, most of all, writing fiction.
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STRANGER IN THE STORM
In this thriller-romance, Janet Mitchell, who has just earned her master’s in creative writing at NYU, leaves Jack Dexter, the professor who swept her off her feet, after realizing the abusive side of his personality. Staying in her parents’ secluded cottage in upstate New York that summer to write her second novel, she is rescued during a hurricane by Wes Corbett, a handsome but mysterious young man who has no choice but to spend the stormy night with her.
Years before, Wes had vowed not to get romantically involved again, fearing anyone close to him might be harmed by his brother William, a born criminal. Now as he and Janet weather the storm together, their mutual attraction becomes clear. Yet Janet fears Wes may harbor the same darkness she’d discovered in the New York City professor, while Wes wonders if he can keep his vow—even though he knows William is on the loose and may be headed directly for them.
Buy links:
ibook: https://books.apple.com/us/book/stranger-in-the-storm/id1510438000?ls=1
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Storm-Patricia-McAlexander-ebook/dp/B087Z3PR6C
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stranger-in-the-storm-patricia-mcalexander/1136954997
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