I'm always learning and growing.
Writing THE LEARNER'S PERMIT has been a fascinating journey for me. I started with characters that I knew well, an opening scene, a few key events, and an ending and let the story unfold in front of me. The totally amazing thing to me has been how the plot has grown and changed, and how the ending surprised me. Even through the multiple revisions (I stopped counting after ten), new elements kept showing up, like the "For Sale" sign Jenna planted in the yard when she was ten, which didn't show up until the the next to last version.
The novel was motivated by a need to write about the relationship between a mother and daughter, and the mother's lifelong best friend--and how the strength and wisdom the three women derive from each other affects their other relationships in a powerful way. Fifteen-and-a-half, the age teens learn to drive, is an awkward for daughters: they are becoming women, dating and facing a multitude of social pressures. Driving lessons, however, provide an insular environment. I treasured the time I spent in the car with my daughter, so I built an entirely fictional plot around it. (My husband wishes to point out that he's very much alive.)
The Mr. Potato Head Approach
I use the "Mr. Potato Head" approach to character development: an eye from here, a nose from there, and perhaps a mouth from somewhere else. My years as a practicing physician exposed me to hundreds of different personality types and different emotional responses to crises and stress, which has been invaluable to me as a writer. There's also a little bit of me in every character from Elizabeth, who shares my Starbucks addiction and graphics/web design talents, to the über-organized, bossy Alison and even, perhaps, the temper-prone Drew (though my temper is, I hope, miniscule compared to his). My friends and acquaintances will see themselves in my characters, too--probably in three or four, or even five if they look hard enough. But my characters are imaginary, every one. (Well, I do have to admit that I see Johnny Depp in my mind's eye every time I write a scene for Eddie. What can I say? He's my favorite actor).
Some of the events are real, in that events like them occurred, but they involved very different people and very different outcomes. There is no Elizabeth, no Jenna, no Alison, and, I'm sad to say, no Eddie. I wish there were, particularly in Eddie's case. Drew, on the other hand, is probably lucky; he's saved himself more than a few black eyes, I'll warrant, by remaining entirely a figment of my imagination.
When I'm writing, I put my characters together in situations and let them work things out. I often feel that I'm watching a play and that my job, as author, is to write down what I see, using all of my senses, so that you, the reader, feel as if you're there with me. More times than I can count, my characters surprise me by saying something I didn't expect or behaving in a way I didn't plan. When these improvisations occur, sometimes I yell, "CUT!" and review the "script" with them, but most of the time, I'll let the scene play out, just to see where it takes me. As it turned out, my characters completely rewrote a great deal of THE LEARNER'S PERMIT. The finished product bears little resemblance to the first draft, and the changes were more than half the fun. There were days when I could hardly wait to sit down at the computer just to see what would happen next.
If you, the reader, enjoy the book half as much as I enjoyed writing it, I will have a bestseller on my hands.
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