Often readers have come to me asking, ‘what inspires you to write your novels?’
Many authors are asked this question. I am grateful readers would consider my efforts to be worthy of the question. At the same time, when the question presents itself, I am somewhat bewildered.
Frankly, I never know how to respond. Perhaps that sounds a bit odd, as it is so frequently asked.
My brain immediately races in search of an answer, a poignant answer, my wanting to honor the inquiry with a salient answer rewarding the reader with a response to which they can internalize and justify their interest in my work.
Admittedly, that sounds a bit self-absorbed. However, at the same time, the inquiry unintentionally calls into question, ‘Why on earth am I going to all this effort to write one novel after the other?’
The truth is, I have always created stories in my mind, and to my chagrin, soon thereafter, they hid in the depths of my memory.
I have been guilty of daydreaming all my life. I vividly remember being chastised in my younger years for that preoccupation. No doubt, I may have been a better student had I focused that energy on my studies.
Nevertheless, that trait is still deeply embedded in my psyche.
Once I started writing, I reconciled myself to the fact that daydreaming was the mechanism for exercising the creative within me. Today, I cherish that for which I was so often chastised. I, therefore, encourage those of you who have this ‘talent’ to embrace it!
The first time I noted the joy and utility in creating stories, was when my children were very young. When putting them to bed, they would ask me to read them a story. Well, as many of you parents and attentive uncles, aunts, grandparents, and caregivers know, children enjoy having the same story read over and over. It is a familiar experience for them and provides them with consistency and a sense of wellbeing.
As the reader, I became interminably bored rendering the same story again and again. One evening I pleaded with them to allow me to tell them another story, one they had never heard.
“Do you have a new book to read, Daddy?” One of them asked.
I responded, “Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“In my head,” I replied, challenging their imagination.
“In your head? Let me see! How can you have a book in your head?”
We bantered back and forth for a moment or two until I received their permission to tell them a new story.
The long and short of it is they forced me to make up a story on the spot. Yes, I panicked a bit, but commandeered one of their favorite stuffed animals, a small fawn-colored puppy, and took my place kneeling at the end of their bed. I used my hands to manipulate its movements, much as a puppeteer. The story of ‘The Knight of Oceanopolis’ was born.
I never committed the story to paper, but my full-grown children, with children of their own, remember it to this day.
You now know the answer to one reason I write.
Stay tuned for my next newsletter to learn of several other reasons I craft stories today.
JRSTRAYVEJR
www.jrstrayvejr.com
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