Art Imitating Life. Life imitating Art.

I had an idea.  I wrote a book.  I didn't pre-plan it or prepare it or pre-think the characters before I wrote it.  I jumped straight in at chapter one and didn't stop until the end.  I just made up the story as I went along.   An organic process.  Two years later I was very pleased with my new book.  'Wow I did it', I thought.  I couldn't believe I had actually done it.  I was happy with the achievement of just having finished my first novel.  Proud of the dedication and the enjoyment of getting it finished.  I loved the process.  I didn't even think much about that process as I was just so busy getting on with the process of writing my first novel. 

Getting it written was enjoyably frenetic as it obviously meant working around the beautiful frenetics of family life.  Kids, school activities, after school activities, people visiting, boilers breaking etc etc etc.  I was so enwrapped in the joy and the pace and the thrill of writing this story, of bringing it to life, of taking it out of my head and putting it onto paper, that I never thought beyond that.

It was only when the dust started to settle.  When I started to come up for air after having got The Highwaygirl published that something started to slowly dawn on me.  It all might sound obvious now, nothing new and even stupid to mention but to me it wasn't.  To me it was a bit of a light bulb moment.  Oh my Gosh!  It's me.  The story that I had just written was my story.  Obviously I wasn't a highway robber, or a supreme horse woman or even half as brave as my heroine but the same thread, the core of the story was the same.  Mine is obviously in a different century.  Different social structures.  Different adventures, different, different, different. Different but for one thing.  The main thing.  The core of the story.  Which is, taking charge of one's own destiny. 

That's it.  I too was taking charge of my own destiny.  But a lot less adventurously.  And without a pistol and a cool hat and a cool coat and a cool horse.  But none-the-less the same intention.  The same deep desire to carve out ones own destiny and not the destiny others want to choose for you.

So basically on this rather more serious blog note something of the author always breathes through a book.  We know this.  We read books because of this.  I read a ton of books.  But strangely now as the writer and not the reader of a book I stand on the other side, of what that actually feels like, the author breathing some of her life through the pages, through the story of her book.

Amazing how true Oscar Wilde's saying is;  “Art imitates life' or is it 'Life imitates art?”

Could be both, no?