Life is in a constant state of flux. While I’ve loved watching our city’s peregrine falcons for the past few months, the chicks are now fully fledged, catching their own food, and mostly scattered to distant places. Only Papa was poking around the nest box this morning, his wings in full molt. My husband’s health recently took a nosedive, so I’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks doing the rounds of tests and doctor appointments. The problem is not life-threatening, but he’s miserable, which makes me miserable, as well as non-productive in a writing sense. The only good thing is that the problem arose after I’d finished the first draft, so it’s letting the book cook a bit, which will make its problems more obvious when I get back to it. Distance magnifies weak spots and paints repetition in blazing neon. I expect numerous utterances like why on earth did I write that? when I finally return to the manuscript.

In the meantime, I remind myself daily that dealing with life is part of the writing process. If we try to write in a vacuum, we soon have nothing to say. If one is a writer, all of life’s experiences eventually find their way onto the page. I know many writers who have dealt with the pain of divorce by torturing their ex in print. Mystery and horror writers are especially adept at this type of closure. It’s also a lovely way to handle malevolent co-workers, tyrannical bosses, betrayal, and a host of other negative life experiences. One of my books contains the pianist from hell, written after a particularly trying period with one of my students. Story conflicts often have their roots in real-life squabbles, catty gossip, cutting set-downs, etc, etc. Good events are also useful. An interesting face seen in passing can spawn a character. As can an overheard comment or a newspaper headline. While signing books at a mall a few years ago, I spotted a guy decked out in studded leather, whole-body tattoos, numerous piercings, and so many heavy chains he sounded like Scrooge’s Morley as he strolled along – my next book contained a dandy who over-indulged in every fashion fad.

Then there’s the weather…

I often refer to A Bird in Hand as my El Niño book. Strong El Niños off Peru can spawn powerful storms in the northern Pacific like the ones that were pounding California when I started that book. I couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing two red banners scrolling across the bottom of the screen warning of floods, winds, mudslides, school and road closings, etc, etc. We set records for rainfall as we suffered measurable precipitation for 32 straight days. The Noah jokes got really old. So it was no surprise that a lot of weather wound up in that particular book. The hero and heroine met in the middle of a river while being swept away by a flood, the hero’s best friend was badly injured when a tree crashed into his carriage, the hero fought his way through a mudslide, a debris dam threatened the tenants and stranded the sheep… In other words, each day’s headlines triggered new scenes. Since the book won awards, it obviously worked.

So as I escort my husband from doctor’s office to lab to pharmacy to various testing facilities, I remind myself that this will all be grist for the mill. Granted, Regency England didn’t have modern medicine, but I will use this experience somehow. If nothing else, it provides an excellent example of frustration…