If you’re a writer, do you ever stop to identify the moment when you’re first touched by an idea for your next project? Is there one moment you can identify as being the “germ” that started your book, or has it been forgotten?
I vividly remember when I first had the idea for Whisper on the Wind (to release in 2010). I’ve mentioned before how this book seemed a gift. I started writing it after a long period of time away from writing, and when I sat down to the computer with the desire to write again, the whole story just seemed to flow. Sometimes when I look back on it, it seems as though God was at work on this book inside of me long before I was.
I was reading a non-fiction book about one of my favorite eras, the early decades of 1900’s. I recall one tiny little reference to a “valiant underground newspaper, La Libre Belgique.” Since I was reading about the First World War, I knew the paper must have been “underground” because of the circumstances of war. What made it valiant? How did it operate? What sort of thing did it publish?
At the time, I wasn’t actively writing. I recall thinking if I ever did return to the writing life, this might be worth checking into because I knew I’d find a story worth telling.
So I investigated a story idea even though I wasn’t planning to use it any time soon. This was a while ago (not sure I want to count the years, but surely more than ten!). The Internet wasn’t the extensive source of information that it is today, so I searched through the books on my shelf relating to that era. I checked Indexes to see if they included any references to this newspaper, and a few did. By following a trail of bibliographies and other sources referencing this newspaper, I eventually stumbled across a book that in essence told the complete story of how this paper worked. It was written by a man who interviewed the people directly involved.
I was hooked. Here was an entire storyline just waiting to be fleshed out with characters of my own. But because I wasn’t writing much at the time, I set my notes aside, making sure I had the titles of all the books I knew about referencing this subject. I made doubly sure to have the title, publisher and author’s name of the book that would be such a valuable resource if ever I chose to create a story around it.
Research is so much fun when it writes stories for us, and that’s eventually what happened with this book. By the time I sat down to write, I had so much detailed information, vital to telling this story, that it played a huge role in that book “writing itself.”
People decide to write a book for a variety of reasons, but one is when they come across something they find wildly exciting or interesting, and educate themselves about it. So much that they want to share it with others. What better way to do that than to frame it inside a story? It’s one way to share part of ourselves, our interests, the worlds we like to live in inside our head.
I recall being told when I was young that I needed to have something to say if I wanted to write a book. When I first started writing I never thought I did have anything to say, at least not anything that would be very important. I just wanted to entertain myself and then, hopefully, others. And I think that’s valid. It took me a while to let myself think that way, but I wholeheartedly believe it now. Leave the profundity to the literary writers; I choose to entertain.
But somehow messages DO get in there, whether we plan it or not. A body of work inevitably stands for something. I didn’t realize how strong the theme in Whisper on the Wind would turn out to be until well in the story. I started out wanting to tell everyone about the kind of people who were willing to risk their lives to make life more tolerable for themselves and others. But in so doing, writing this story taught me what a formidable force can be carried behind words. Propaganda is a war tool for a reason—because words have power. To inspire, to give hope, to manipulate both thoughts and behaviors.
It’s no less true today than it was one hundred years ago. Don’t you think?
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