Heads up: My experience may sound strange to you. All I can tell you is that this is what happened to me.
One morning when I was in Kansas City visiting relatives, I went out early for a walk and stumbled into a historical graveyard. Wandering around, reading the old stones, I came across one which simply said, “Horse Thief 1898.” No name, nothing else.
That afternoon my cousin Barb and I drove across Kansas in a blinding rainstorm. To entertain ourselves, we imagined who the horse thief might have been.
When I got home, research failed to help me answer that question. I didn’t think any more about it.
A year later, as I attended a leadership conference in Singapore as a guest with my husband, I looked around at the big-name, important people around me and said a little prayer in my head: “God, is there something more you want me to be doing with my life?”
Immediately, I received a response. I heard a voice that seemed to me to be speaking out loud. I glanced quickly around to determine whether other people were hearing it. The voice said, “I gave you the Cally story. Why haven’t you written it?”
What??!!
I hadn’t thought about Cally for a year. I thought Barb and I were just having fun. Even though I loved historical fiction, I had never even considered writing in that genre.
But the voice was so clear and compelling that when I got home I started researching Ireland and the U.S. in that time period. I loved the research. I filled notebooks with all I was learning. I engaged a local librarian to help me find sources, especially about the Malcomson family in Ireland, a wealthy Quaker family who intrigued me because they cared so much for people less fortunate than they were. Despite great animosity between the Catholic population of Ireland and the very few non-Catholics, the Quakers successfully built bridges that allowed them to do more good during the great potato famine than the government did. Besides feeding people, they built schools, taught skills, opened doors to more than peasant farming. In dramatic contrast with other shipping lines, the Malcomson ships were clean, its emigrant passengers well fed and cared for.
There were so many interesting rabbit trails to follow, I could have researched indefinitely. One day, though, I listened to a podcast for writers, as I sometimes did. The presenter seemed to look straight at me as he said, “Stop researching! Write your story.”
I didn’t have my story all figured out. I had an arc–I knew where it started and some of its themes and where I wanted it to end. I knew there would be another main character, a Malcomson, growing up completely differently from Cally. I didn’t have a detailed outline.
But the podcast guy said, “Write.” So I began. And began the most amazing journey of my writing life. The characters themselves told me what happened to them. I might try to take the story in a certain direction, but one of them would say to me, “No–that’s not what happened! This is what happened.”
My husband and I had many discussions. As he read what I wrote, he often said, “Oh, but I wanted this to happen.”
“I can’t help it. That’s not what happened.”
“But you’re the author …”
“Yeah. I guess …”
Like I said, an experience that surprised me at every turn. I often told Dave at dinner, “You’ll never guess what happened today. I had no idea the story would take such a turn.”
“But you’re the author!”
“Sorry. I can only write what Cally and Charlie tell me.”
I didn’t know that reaching the end of my story arc would require three books, not just one. I didn’t know about the whole treasure hunt in Idaho until Cally and Charlie told me about it. I didn’t know that a character named Billy would come into the story, another runaway child with so much to learn and so much to teach me.
So much I didn’t know. Weird, huh?
I did know that Cally suffered deep emotional wounds as a child, and this story would be about her healing. I didn’t know this would take years, nor all that would take place along the way. Nor the special people who came into her life.
I did know that despite Charlie’s privileged status and his musical gifts, he too suffered hurts and disappointments and needed to wrestle his own way through to a deeper understanding of his own life and Laoise’s.
Every twist and turn required more research. I loved it. The Oregon Trail had fascinated me as a child. What happened in its aftermath–the communities and challenges that sprung up in the wake of the great push westward–opened a whole new vista. I loved visiting Idaho and traveling the length of the Oregon Trail all the way to its end, and finding a librarian at the Idaho Historical Society who gave me wonderful unpublished resources to fuel my imagination of the resilient people who settled the land in southern Idaho. The importance of water. The terrible conflicts with native people. The slow development of medical and other resources.
I’ve always enjoyed treasure hunts–just ask my kids. Imagining and living with Cally and Charlie inside this one was pure delight. I think Treasure Hunt 1904 is my favorite of the three books. But when I start thinking about Facing the Faeries 1906, I’m not so sure. Cally’s, Charlie’s, Laoise’s, and Billy’s emotional journeys enthralled me. The ending delighted me, and still does.
I can say all this because it’s not my story. It’s Cally’s, and Charlie’s, and Billy’s, and Ryan’s, and Laoise’s, and all the others, who feel to me like part of my family. I feel like I know them better than I know most of my friends. I’m deeply grateful to them for sharing their stories with me.
Weird, huh?
