Dear Flyboy,
It’s been a while since I wrote you. I’ve missed you but I didn’t know what to say to you anymore. I’ve felt like I’ve been talking in circles in your story for years and just not getting anywhere and, to tell you the truth, I was starting to wonder if it was worth the trouble. I was starting to think that maybe your story was just for me and that maybe I ought to let it go.
Then along came April and National Poetry month. I wrote all these poems about my dad that I never knew and I started thinking about how much you and I were alike, how many questions we both have about our pasts.
April surprised me with all the feelings that got stirred up inside of me. Things I didn’t think bothered me started to bother me something fierce and things that should have pissed me off didn’t seem like such a big deal. Hurts I thought I had buried a long time ago came bubbling up to the surface to hurt me all over again but by the end of the month I had a few more answers than I’d had at the beginning of the month and even if I didn’t like the answers, well, they were my answers to my story.
Which got me thinking about you and Wilson and Tate and how, if I’m going to tell your story, the right story, I’m going to have to hurt you. A lot.
I’ll just go ahead an apologize for that now.
Signed,
me
Yay!
I’m so glad to hear this, Susan! Yes, you’re going to have to put Flyboy through the wringer. But you’ll do it while feeling compassion for him, and that will make all the difference. Love the determination I’m hearing!
Re: Yay!
Thank you, Laura. I really think the April project is going to help me a lot with this story. That and something else that I’ll have to send you an email about. 🙂
Ah, this post is poignant on so many levels. But it reminds me that the stories I’ve cared about the most are the stories where the characters have suffered the most, and that’s a lesson I need to bring to my own WIP…
It’s very hard, isn’t it, to make our characters suffer? But I agree that those are the stories that touch me the most as well.
Synchronicity again, Susan. Yesterday I was stopped at a red light behind a vehicle with the license plate: FLI BOY. I thought of you and this project, and wondered how it was going. And now I know.
Oh I love synchronicity! Yay! Thank you for thinking about me and my story.
Those were brave, brilliant poems, Susan. And Flyboy’s story is going to be brave and brilliant, too. xo
Thank you, Amy. I can only hope.