Thursday, June 17, 2010

Inspiration

Lately, I've been asked why I decided to write: The Sweetness, which is a really important question since many writers, while working, rarely stop to ponder the inspiration for what they are putting down on paper.

With this writing endeavor I often felt as though I was taking a trip around the world ( in a rowboat with one oar) and discovering so much I thought I already knew, but in reality knew nothing at all. Or, my knowledge was as basic and superficial as the chapter headings in any social studies text book. Love. Marriage. Illness. War. Death.And Again. That is the way it is sometimes with writing. Was it Flannery O'Connor who said: "We write to discover what we know?" In writing The Sweetness I unearthed a passion for my family's complicated history, why the people I'd loved so much acted as crazy, we called it meshuga, as they often did, and why there seemed to be so many things they would only talk about in dark corners of a room- their voices barely above a whisper. I never set out to write a historical novel; I began writing (at first a short story) about two people inspired by my parents' lives, and slowly became fascinated with their history and all that preceded their union as man and wife. In the process, I rediscovered characters I had only heard about or known briefly but had made a huge impact on our family's colorful tapestry. It was within this framework, that I was able to create characters and revisit events that would eventually lead me to the answers for questions I'd been asking for most of my life.   

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