What a Novel Idea

What I am getting at is what do we tell people about ourselves when one is in stealth? Image you are standing in line at the checkout counter in a store and the woman next to you smiles and begins a conversation with you. It starts out pleasantly enough, probably with a mutual complaint about waiting and stores never having enough help, but then it turns more personal. She mentions her children and of course she wants to know how many you have, and it just builds from there. Now it is easy to talk about children if you have them but what do you say when she ask you about your husband? Remember that she is not prying. What she is doing is establishing that equal ground, that inclusiveness that women do in which they bond with each other. They create a common framework – we both hate waiting in line and you both have children so naturally we both have husbands, right?

To her you are just another woman and that is how you want it to be so you have to say something to keep the rapport building and here is where our quick thinking fiction writing talent comes into play. You can tell her that you are single but only if you did not tell her about the kids. You might say that you are divorced but you better have a good reason for why you split besides your wife not wanting to be a lesbian. And so the story line develops with a sketchy outline -divorced woman moves to new town to make a fresh start.

If you are waiting in a doctor’s office, a similar situation could arise. This time the conversation will probably turn very personal. Women because of their common background just share a lot of intimate information about themselves than men would ever do. So you are asked casually why you are there and you reply it is just a check up, that becomes the opening for our protagonist. The woman says that she is too but then begins to go into some details of why she is there. She includes some of her symptoms so that maybe you have experienced the same ones or knows someone who has and you will volunteer some information. So how good are you on information about menstrual crams, yeast infections, vaginal dryness, and a host of other medical topics that are unique/common to women including childbirth (remember you had children when you were talking to the woman in the checkout line.)

The narration develops and you begin to fill in things that are missing, like your past. The saga naturally becomes more complex as more details are revealed. As you make more and more new friends, the tale needs to be consistent but enviably someday someone will have been from your home town or know someone from there; and of course, they will want to confirm if you know so and so, your high school graduation class, the part of town you lived in, etc. Now your pastoral novel begins to sound more like a mystery with the heroine (yourself) constantly looking over her shoulder. Plus you have to keep remembering all the details of the story because those will the things that can trip you up in casual conversation with your friends. They will remember that you grew up in an apartment and will question you about those lazy summer afternoons on your front porch swing.

I can understand one’s desire to put the past behind them and to get on with their life, but how do we do it. We are now people without a past. We are the mystery person who shows up in town one day shrouded in secrets. How can we make friends when we can not share details of our past? We have to tell them something, but someday our past will show up on our doorstep like a rejection letter from a publisher. What will our friends say when they learn that they have been deceived? Will they understand; and even more important, will they treat us like they had before they found out?

I thought about making the heroine of my novel an amnesia victim so I would not have to come up with a past but then the details of the paper trail just became too complex for fiction. My yarn could be have accounts of a very small town here in my state but no matter where I go now there are people who know about or know someone from that small town. It is just too small a world these days. But my biggest worry is that I will end up suffering from writers block and just stand there in line with this stupid expression on my face when the woman ask me, “Paper or plastic.” Duh…

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