One More About my Dislike of Reading
It looks like I'm going to have to do some reading. I've got a story brewing and I need to fill in some blanks. Sadly I can only fill in those blanks with research. And thanks to my Masters of Liberal Arts degree, I know how to research and how to turn that research into halfway decent fiction. Means I'm going to have to bite it and read. Fucking read. God, how I hate to read.
Abandon the story? Sure, sure. I could do that. And let the character who so graciously entrusted his story to me die. Can't do it. Even if it means I have to read.
I usually write what I know (reference my collection of short stories about tennis) and I know this. I know my topic. I don't think he would have given me his story to write if I didn't get it on some spiritual level. It absorbed most of my late childhood and early adulthood. I'm pretty sure I read every book in the Poway Library on the topic, back when libraries were the place to go for books. Back when I read. I'd have said I was an expert, as expert as a teenager could be on a topic that entered the history books many years before her lifetime.
Now, nearly thirty years later, I need a refresher course. I need to get my facts right. I need to tell his story in a way that does justice to history. I need to bring real life to something that never happened. I need to make fiction seem like fact.
You see, Staciu, the boy in my story never lived. He never saved the lives of fourteen Jewish girls by hiding them right under the noses of the Germans. He never played tennis with a German Army officer on an old dirt court at a villa in the Polish countryside. He never escaped from the Gestapo and never joined the Polish resistance, only to be captured and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was never orphaned, never came to America, never played tennis at UT, and never went on the teach German and coach tennis at Austin High School for forty years.
To tell that story, Staciu's story, I need to re-create a time and a place. I need to be there, breathe it in, understand it. The only way to do that is through research. And that will inevitably require reading.
I hate reading, but I love the boy and the story I must tell. For them, I will read. Ugh. I will read.
Abandon the story? Sure, sure. I could do that. And let the character who so graciously entrusted his story to me die. Can't do it. Even if it means I have to read.
I usually write what I know (reference my collection of short stories about tennis) and I know this. I know my topic. I don't think he would have given me his story to write if I didn't get it on some spiritual level. It absorbed most of my late childhood and early adulthood. I'm pretty sure I read every book in the Poway Library on the topic, back when libraries were the place to go for books. Back when I read. I'd have said I was an expert, as expert as a teenager could be on a topic that entered the history books many years before her lifetime.
Now, nearly thirty years later, I need a refresher course. I need to get my facts right. I need to tell his story in a way that does justice to history. I need to bring real life to something that never happened. I need to make fiction seem like fact.
You see, Staciu, the boy in my story never lived. He never saved the lives of fourteen Jewish girls by hiding them right under the noses of the Germans. He never played tennis with a German Army officer on an old dirt court at a villa in the Polish countryside. He never escaped from the Gestapo and never joined the Polish resistance, only to be captured and imprisoned in a concentration camp. He was never orphaned, never came to America, never played tennis at UT, and never went on the teach German and coach tennis at Austin High School for forty years.
To tell that story, Staciu's story, I need to re-create a time and a place. I need to be there, breathe it in, understand it. The only way to do that is through research. And that will inevitably require reading.
I hate reading, but I love the boy and the story I must tell. For them, I will read. Ugh. I will read.
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