I am working on a new book. People often ask me where I get the ideas for my books. When I die, perhaps I will donate my brain to science, so they can study my over-developed creative right brain and try and figure out what went wrong with my barely-functioning shriveled-up left brain organizational center. The idea for the book started with an abandoned red brick building in the Avenues in Salt Lake City . I had driven through the subject neighborhood recently, showing one of my stepsons around the city, and for some reason, had chosen to show him where the Primary Children's Hospital used to be.
As I drove through that neighborhood, I noticed the names of some of the streets, among them Penny Parade Lane , Charity Drive (clever, no?) and Caring Circle, if I remember correctly. I told him that the imposing red building looked like a place a homeless person might live. I decided to try my hand at a book of mystery and intrigue set in that neighborhood. The working title I chose was “Mystery on Penny Parade Lane.” My mind began to conceive a plan. There would be an idealistic bishop—more about my model for him later—who interacts with a homeless man, who lives in the red brick building, taking him food and trying to gain his trust so that he would be able to help him further. Then it all came to me. The bishop could be in the process of helping the homeless man, trying to get his congregation to follow suit, when the homeless man dies. The bishop would decide to take his place, to “walk a mile in his moccasins” and would stubbornly decide not to reappear until someone in his congregation did an act of service for the homeless man. It would become “the case of the missing bishop.”
Besides being inspired by the red brick building, the other half of my inspiration comes from a former bishop of mine in wealthy Boca Raton, Florida. Worried that we lived in an area that promoted worldliness, he came to church one Sunday morning dressed in rags, and as people pulled up to the church building, they saw a scruffy man looking for food in the dumpster. I parked on the other side of the building, so I did not have the guilt of being one of the people who passed him by, but I heard about it as I came into the chapel. Then he came into the building, strode up to the pulpit, took off the hat he'd had pulled down low and preached a sermon about giving service “unto the least of these.” I never forgot that sermon.
I decided to take it a step further, flesh it out, and make it a novel rather than a short story, and set it in Salt Lake . (I'm working on another one set in Florida, aptly called “The House Upon the Sand.”) I was several chapters into this book when I realized “ Houston , we have a problem.” One of the things a writer has to be able to do is convince people that what they are writing about could possibly happen. Sometimes when you try to suspend reality, the ropes break, and it all comes down on your head. I realized that while it might be plausible that Bishop Fisher would feel strongly enough about being charitable to actually become homeless for a time, disappearing and putting his family through the distress of not knowing where he was would be decidedly uncharitable and not something he would likely do.
This was upsetting, because I had already conceived the final chapter, where his daughter, Kari, and her returned missionary “friend” Eric, who wanted to be more than her friend, solved the mystery. In the process of following the clues and spending time together, of course, she had finally begun to see Eric in a different light, and their relationship had taken a romantic turn. (I love to root for the underdog in romantic situations.)
One day they had waited for the homeless man to leave his building and then they had gone through his meager belongings, finding, among other things, a shoebox full of newspaper clippings that revealed events that had led up to the man's current situation in life. Then they found a set of LDS scriptures. As they turned them over, there is Bishop Fisher's name embossed on the scriptures. This, of course, in my mind at least, was a moment of revelation akin to the discovery of the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes, because up to this point, the reader did not know that Bishop Fisher had taken the homeless man's place. Kari does not put it together at first, thinking that it just means that the homeless man is somehow connected to her father's disappearance, but Eric puts two and two together. He would take Kari with him to visit the homeless man later that evening, and instead of just leaving food like they usually did, Eric would reveal what he had figured out by taking her inside the building and asking the homeless man for his daughter's hand in marriage. There were some bugs to work out (meaning the whole middle of the book was still missing along with the bishop) but it was coming together.
Hijacked by the Characters
First let me say, in defense of my sanity, I have talked with other authors whose characters talk to them and take over the story, and at least one mystery writer has told me how surprised she was to find out who the murderer was.
Bishop Fisher started talking to me. “I wouldn't put my family through that.”
“Okay, I can see your point. What if I make your wife really worldly, and your marriage is floundering and ...”
“And would me disappearing to teach her a lesson about being humble and charitable help my marriage?”
“No, I suppose not. But see, I make her character sympathetic. She grew up poor, and kids made fun of her, and she is overcompensating now and still trying to make it up to her inner child and that's why...”
“I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it to my wife or to my kids.”
“What if I make her totally selfish and materialistic and you disappeared to get away from her? After you've been gone for a while, she could check on what she needs to do to have you declared legally dead and collect on your life insurance.”
“Why would someone so idealistic marry someone like that?
“But if you don't disappear, there goes the whole story. Then all I've got is a vacant red brick building.”
“Susan, the problem is that you are trying to make it a mystery. It isn't a mystery. It's a morality tale.”
“I don't write morality tales.”
“I don't care.”
“I can see that.”
“What if I had lost my family?”
“You want me to kill off Lisa and Kari and all your other children?”
“Then I would be grief stricken, and it would make me all the more idealistic and prone to doing something like this, to no longer care about worldly things and be desperate to make a point with my ward members, desperate enough to do something crazy.”
“The added motivation would probably be helpful. But what about Eric? He's in love with Kari, you know. I had that all unfolding so nicely.”
“Send him back to the Young Adult socials. He'll meet someone else.”
“Okay, I'm willing to consider this, but Kari has to be an only child, so I don't have to take out a whole family. She's adopted. That's why you just have the one child. What now?”
“The readers are in on it from the beginning. They know it is me impersonating the homeless man.”
“There goes my whole mystery. I was doing so well at laying the clues and . . .”
“The suspense is not about whether anyone finds out that the homeless man is me, the suspense is about how and when the church members are going to get the lesson I'm trying to teach them.”
Back to the Drawing Board
So Bishop Fisher sent me back to begin again. Now that the story is unfolding, I have to admit that he was right. It isn't called “Mystery on Penny Parade Lane ” anymore. It is called “Unto the Least of These.” I created Bishop Fisher, and now it is my job to follow him around and write about what he does. Creating characters is rather like having children. You may bring them to life, but they are not necessarily totally in your control, nor should they be. Wonderful things can happen when you give up control.
I've been reading an interesting book lately called “Extremes,” by Robert Eaton. The cover states “How to keep your virtues from becoming vices,” something we would all do well to consider. The chapter I just finished talked about how being too rigid in our preparation and planning can leave us unable or unwilling to listen to the promptings of the spirit when they come. I find this to be very true in my writing and presentations. In fact, I stopped using Powerpoint presentations for that very reason. “Sorry Lord, I don't have a slide that fits with that idea.”
What a coincidence that I would read that just when I need it. Coincidentally, my book starts with the saying “Coincidences are small miracles in which God chooses to be anonymous.” Go figure.
