How do people write stories? How do they come up with a strong, sweeping plot and then fill it with colorful, profound characters and their experiences, thoughts, and actions?
This year I have been recording the books that I am reading, and so far, I've read 20 new books. These have ranged from Tina Fey's Bossypants to Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner (my favorite thus far). I've read a few that I didn't really like - or understand - for example, Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House. I ask for reading suggestions from my coworkers, my friends, and my family, ensuring that I have a constantly growing list of "must-reads."
I have been constantly amazed at the ability of these authors to describe people, places, and experiences with a vividness that makes me believe that they have personally met and experienced those things. One major example of this was when I read Life of Pi. Obviously the author has never been stranded in the ocean with a tiger, but the way that he described the night sky and the depths of the ocean or even the carnivorous island was breathtaking. How could he imagine those things in his head in such vividness and detail?
The creation of characters though is what really stirs me. Right now I am reading a collection of short stories by Eudora Welty, and her characterization is incredible. Does she know people like her characters or does she concoct these profound, complex, fascinating characters out of her own head? How are they so typical and yet surprising at the same time? And because they are short stories, Welty is required to paint their personalities quickly and in just a few words. Jhumpa Lahiri does the same thing in a very different way - just as you are invested in her characters' lives, their stories are over leaving you wanting more. You feel like you met them, that you were witness to their lives, their struggles, and their desires, and yet you are forced to move on.
I especially love novels and short stories that haunt you with a particular phrase or idea. Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies is a prime example based on the title character. His job is a translator at a doctor's office - he listens to the patients and literally "interprets their maladies" to the doctor. His second job is as a taxi driver, and once while chauffeuring a tourist family, he listens to the wife complain about exhaustion and disillusionment with her life and her family. Finding his a sympathetic ear, she asks him what is wrong with her, and he nails her to the wall with the simple question "is it really pain that you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?". Perhaps my favorite book I've read this year is Daniel Mason's The Piano Tuner. I love it because it is vaguely historical, the main character is someone I would like to meet (and whose qualities I would like to possess myself or see in my future husband), and simply because it is well-written. My favorite line in the book is when Edgar (the piano tuner) is describing his employer, a military doctor named Carroll. He thinks "he would like to meet this Doctor; it is not often that one found such poetic words in the letters of military men. And Edgar Drake had much respect for those who find song in responsibility." May I ever be able to find a song in responsibility.
The reason I named this post after the first line in Tolkien's The Hobbit is because I have thrown around the idea of writing my own story. The problem is that I have no story, no idea of what I would put on the page. Fortunately, there is time. Time to continue reading and learning from those who have gone before and have been successful. Time to be inspired, to observe those around me, to be aware of the world in which I live, and to remember the beautiful and the ugly. J.R.R. Tolkien started with a simple phrase, and over the course of several decades this phrase blossomed into an epic. C.S. Lewis also, beginning with the image of a lamppost in the woods and a fawn standing nearby, has immortalized himself through the stories born out of investigating this image. Right now, all I have is the name of a town, Moncks Corner, that sounds like the setting of a story, but what kind and how long and of whom is still a mystery to me. And maybe I'll never write fiction, but I hope that I will never cease to be inspired by the talented and provoking storytellers that have gone before.
