How a Sentence Changed My Life

"At the tennis courts, two young women were in the middle of a match, 

playing well, their pleated skirts flying as they raced after the ball."

That one sentence changed my life. More to the point, it changed the direction of my art. I doubt the author - Sarah Waters - even remembers writing the words. They describe a scene in a park as observed by the two protagonists in her novel, The Paying Guests. I focused on them because of tennis (obviously) but within my imagination something came to life. The two women playing became Anna and Adah, who had a story all of their own, a story I had to tell. 

I was at the inevitable low point that follows the completion of a major project. I'd finished my first novel and, because I was steadfastly procrastinating its editing, I re-started work on another novel project I'd left unfinished while in grad school. After a couple weeks miserably slogging and fighting my way toward an ending, I realized I was deadlocked. I hit "save"one last time and seriously pondered my future as a writer.

I struggled for several reasons, none of which had anything to do with my ability to write. First of all, Stella and Maggie, the women I'd spent six months writing, were still so fresh in my mind. It was like we'd broken up or they'd moved away. I was lost and found myself completely unable to get into other characters. I felt like, in some strange way, I was cheating on them.

Secondly, I needed to brush up on lesbian history to properly finish the un-finished novel. It was time for one of my characters to reminisce about what it was like being gay in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I needed a clue so I bought a couple books and started reading. At about the same time, I started reading lesbian fiction. I read books mentioned in the lesbian history books I was reading and happened to talk to a friend who recommended Sarah Waters. 

I found The Paying Guests at an airport book store at the start of my vacation. While on vacation, my step-mother gave me an oral history she'd taken about a woman named Helen who was born in San Diego around the turn of the century and died in 2006 at the age of 107. The two works swirled and swirled in my brain. Helen had a friend named Adah and I remember telling my step-mom that I would use those names in a story one day. Little did I realize that "one day" would come so soon. 

Shortly after returning from my vacation, I wrote "The Parasol", a short story about the two women playing tennis on Sarah Water's tennis court. Though it was probably my best story to date, it merely scratched the surface of something much bigger. In reading Sarah Waters novels, I'd fallen in love once again with historical fiction. In reading lesbian history, I learned that the voices of so many women had been silenced. There was a story I had to write, a story that had never been told. 

I suddenly found myself in a time period I knew very little about. The Paying Guests was set in the early 20s, just after the end of World War I. The project I proposed to undertake would take place during The War. I was infinitely familiar with World War II; it captured my interest and passion when I was in high school and college. Perhaps it was its accessibility or the fact that my parents had both lived through it, I really don't know. But as much as I knew about WWII, I knew that little about WWI. I had the dates and the major countries involved down. I might have been able to name one or two famous battles, but that was about it. 

Like my other (as yet still) unfinished novel, I needed knowledge and nuance. I was going to have to do research, a lot of research. I began at Amazon.com and my local public library (shameless plug for the Lake Travis Community Library in Lakeway, Texas. Let me just say THANK GOD for a very cool and easy-to-use inter-library loan - ILL - program and knowledgeable staff). I guess I've been reading WWI history for about five months now and every book I read brings me closer to the understanding I need to do my characters and their lives justice.  I've read books so good (Wounded by Emily Mayhew) that I've bought copies from Amazon after originally getting them through ILL and books so bad (Elsie and Mairi Go to War by Diane Atkinson) that I'm ecstatic ILL is free. 

It's a difficult history to read because all the players are dead. There's no one to talk to or interview that was actually there. All I have are biographies, memoirs, and history books and the stories their authors chose to tell. I can't ask the questions no one dared to ask one hundred years ago (or twenty years ago for that matter). I can only make assumptions and educated guesses. 

I'm currently reading Letters from a Lost Generation, an edited compilation of letters written by Vera Brittain, an Oxford educated volunteer nurse, her brother, Edward, and three of his friends, one of whom became Vera's fiance. I read Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain's memoir of her experiences during WWI and the years shortly after. I know who lives and dies. And yet as I read these letters, immaculate and articulate letters written by a young woman and three young men all barely twenty years old, I can't help but hope that somehow history changes and that the sorrow that hangs just past the horizon will fade and disappear (Vera is the only one who survives the war).

My story doesn't end much better. My characters die. It's part of the story. It's what propels the story forward; it's what forms the future. And, in truth, no one can live forever. Or can they? I mean aren't Vera and Roland and Edward, the young people of that Lost Generation, still alive in some way? After all, one hundred years later, I can open a book and read their words. 

I suppose that's why I love history and truly understand it's importance. What is forgotten and left behind dies. What is continually pondered and spoken of remains alive. Now, I don't claim to write history. My characters never really lived and never really died. Their stories are merely that - stories. My hope, though, is that there is a ring of truth to my fiction; that maybe once upon a time someone experienced something similar. 

Keep in mind, I choose to write the history that time, the victors, and the dominant hegemony has swept under the rug. It's not a history many will have learned in school or ever thought about. Some will say that I'm full of shit - history didn't really happened that way. And maybe it didn't. 

But what if it did? How many voices have been silenced? How many stories haven't been told? I know with every possible certainty that the two young women mentioned above in the middle of a match, playing well, with pleated skirts flying, have a story and I'm going to tell it.