Do you have a favorite author? And if you do, have you noticed how often the same themes emerge in his or her work? Oh, the stories might be very different from one another, but if you stop to think about them, you’ll most likely see similarities at the core of each one of them.

In my case, I often write about overcoming fear and coping with loss, as well as about forgiveness and compassion. And always, or very nearly always, my characters come out on top.

If you explore any given author’s body of work, you can learn a great deal about him or her, because writers can’t help but write about the things they fear and the things they value. On the fear side, they select–usually unconsciously– situations they long to be able to control. The loss of a loved one is the most extreme example of this. It’s unbearable to lose someone you love, but by fictionalizing such a loss, the writer has total control over the emotions and actions of the people left behind. The power that accompanies that control can be both reassuring and enlightening for the author, and by extension, for the reader as well.

When I’d finished writing my second book, Lovers and Strangers, one of my friends mentioned how odd it was that I wrote about a brave woman who traveled to the Amazon Jungle when I was so fearful of physical risk myself. I suddenly understood why I’d created Shawn Ryder: she was the woman I wished I could be. Writing about the scary situations she encountered gave me control over them. And there was an added bonus: as I wrote about Shawn, I actually became braver myself.

Writing about the things we value, though, can be a slippery slope. Writers need to be cautious not to pound the reader over the head with their agendas. The story itself needs to be most important, with any thematic message sneaking in through the back door so quietly that it resgisters in the heart of the reader rather than the head. 

If you’re a writer, have you thought about why you write what you write? And if you’re a reader, how aware are you of themes in the stories of your favorite authors? 

Okay, the first thing I want to know is, how the heck did I ever get my hair so straight? I must have worked on it for hours and hours with the ol’ iron, ironing board, and soda can rollers.

Last night was my high school reunion, and I couldn’t go. I really, really wanted to, especially because I was going to spend some extra time with two of my closest high school friends, one of whom I haven’t seen in decades. But John had surgery last week, and my place was most definitely with him.

I know a lot of people never go to their high school reunions. The woman organizing ours, the amazing Gwen Crews, told me some people–many of them seemingly happy and popular back in the day–actually get angry when she tries to track them down. I guess that’s really a case of our “insides looking at their outsides,” as I discussed a few blog posts ago. There’s such pain in adolescence, and it’s not always visible. That’s one reason why I love writing about teenaged characters. Soooo much going on inside those heads and bodies.

What was I like in high school? In my memory, I was two different people. In school, I was extremely quiet and anxious because I was agoraphobic. I had panic attacks in the classroom, and longed for the bell to ring marking the end of each class so I could walk into the hallway and breathe. I had, what I now recognize as, selective mutism. I never volunteered an answer in a class–not even in college. Not until graduate school, when I went through a radical, self-directed transformation. Outside of school, I loved partying (despite being a teetotaler), dating, and hanging out with my friends. Outside of school, I was comfortable in my own skin. 

But actually, I didn’t set out to write this post about me. I set out to write about my high school, Plainfield High School in Plainfield, NJ. Even though my tenure there was difficult, I loved my school because it was incredibly diverse. In the midst of the civil rights era, it was half white, half black, and embodied a fairly phenomenal mixture of religions. It was a microcosm of the world that shaped me into the person I am and that no doubt led me to be a social worker, and later a writer. I still have a paper from an English class in which my teacher wrote in the margin “I think you should be a writter (sic)!”  My parents wanted to take me out of PHS and send me to a Catholic girls’ school. Despite my discomfort in school, I said “no way.” I had no desire for homogeneity.

PHS was not without problems, however. As a matter of fact, the problems were huge. My mother graduated from PHS in 1933, and parts of the school–the second oldest in NJ–were condemned even at that time. I recall holes in the walls in which my friends and I could hide notes to one another. On a more profound level, we were “tracked” into our classes according to culturally biased IQ tests, which resulted in a racial divide that continues today in so many schools and in our society as a whole. There was unrest, distrust, and anger. But there was also tolerance, understanding and compassion that led to friendships that crossed the color and religious divides–and that is so in evidence at the joyful reunions. I learned so much more at PHS than what was taught in the classrooms.  

I’m not the only writer who came out of my class at PHS. Gale Goldberg wrote about bamboo. Gloria Bussell Koster writes children’s books. Our most famous class member is probably Ken Druse, who’s a household name in garden writing. I bet there are others, and I hope they’ll let me know who they are so I can include them.

Thanks for allowing me the time to revisit my high school in my own little private reunion here. Hopefully, I’ll make the next one in person.    

As I continued my hunt for the perfect title, I paid a visit to my profile over at RedRoom.com. Red Room is a great place to connect with authors, and my blog appears on my profile page over there as well as here on my website. Several people on Red Room offered title ideas for “the book formerly known as After the Storm,” but what truly captivated me was one commenter’s suggestion that I check out visualthesaurus.com.

If you’ve done any writing, you may be familiar with word maps, in which you start with one word and branch out from there, brainstorming other words as you go. The virtual thesaurus operates on that principle, although it has other features as well. I spent the better part of the afternoon playing with it, and even though I still don’t have the title of my dreams, I’ve enjoyed exploring this new toy. (You can use it for free on a trial basis, but I immediately bought a subscription because I know it’s going to be one of my new best friends in the writing world.) 

I do have one concern, though. When I teach fiction workshops, I focus on helping writers use their subconscious  as they create their characters and stories. Everyone’s subconscious offer different and delicious experiences and ideas. So my only hesitation in using a tool like the virtual thesaurus is that it can suck that uniqueness out of a writer’s voice by taking away the thoughts and words and concepts that are uniquely yours. In one of my first word maps, which i created as I wrote my second novel, Lovers and Strangers, I started with a character’s name, Meg, in the center of the page. I simply wanted to get to know her character better. Then I set my mind free to surround her name with any other words than popped into my mind, uncensored. When you let ideas flow in this way, you’ll be surprised by what you come up with! Very quickly, the words branched out from her name until I discovered that she was afraid. . . hungry. . . desperate. . . sick. . . and finally diabetic! I’d had no idea. That word map gave me not only insight into her character, but an entire subplot as well. Without setting my subconscious free, I might have written a very different book.

All that is to say I don’t want to lose the brilliance of a “self-directed” word map by utilizing one generated by a computer, even if that computer-generated map has so far proven to be pretty phenomenal. I’m going to continue playing with the virtual thesaurus to see how it can enhance my usual word mapping process. In the meanwhile, I hope it comes up with a book title for me! 

My neighborhood bookclub met tonight to discuss Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell. (For those of you who don’t know, twenty-nine-year-old Julie Powell set a goal of making every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking–all in one year, in a tiny apartment in New York. Lots of stocks made from scratch, jiggly aspic, organ meats and the slaying of lobsters. The movie version comes out next year.).  I would say we had mixed feelings about the book, but we loved our hostess’s yummy French-inspired refreshments and the good company. 

However, this post is really not about that.

When several writers get together and they witness or overhear something fascinating that simply cries out to be in a story, one of them is sure to scoop up the morsel and claim it as her own before the others have a chance to grab it. At bookclub tonight, I heard just such a morsel, and since I don’t think it will ever fit into one of my books, I’m hereby offering it to whoever wants it. It’s just to good to pass up!

One of the bookclub members told us that when she and her husband were house hunting in our neighborhood, they fell in love with one particular house. As they toured it, walking from room to room, they knew it was perfect for their growing family. The owners had already moved out all of their furnishings and the house was empty. . . except for a box on the kitchen counter. You’ve probably already guessed what was in the box: The human skull was surrounded by a bit of dirt, as if it might have been excavated only recently. Even those of you who don’t write must be wondering “Why? Why? Why?” Needless to say, my neighbor and her husband decided to continue their search for a house elsewhere. 

The obvious thing, and it could make a yummy short story, is that a nasty divorce battle resulted in the husband losing the house to his wife, who then needs to sell it. The husband sabotages the sale by planting the skull, because seriously, who’d buy a house with a skull in the kitchen? You’d never be able to walk in that room without picturing that icky box. But I bet a clever writer could come up with something less obvious, so I offer this impossible-to-pass-up morsel to you writers out there. Please do something wonderful with it. I bet this skull would make a delicious stock.