A Thing Where A Thing Does Not Belong

So, here we are in high summer. Courgettes are multiplying faster than keen gardeners can pick, cook and eat them, apples, plums and pears are ripening on the trees, the combine harvesters are making hay while the sun shines and many of us are facing up to the fact that we won't be having a summer holiday this year. At least not in the traditional sense of hopping on a plane or ferry with a phrase book and plenty of sun tan cream in your hand luggage.

That got me to thinking about the last holiday I had. It was in October 2019 and it was an absolute corker. Had I known that that would be it for quite some time, I would probably have padlocked myself to the table in my favourite cafe and refused to move. Comme ci comme ça. 

Last December, my blog took you through the streets of Erquy, a little Breton town by the sea. Shamelessly plundering my October half term holiday there for the second time (life is copy, friends, it really is), let me take you to the bac à marée.

Wandering down to our favourite beach, I noticed something new in the car park. It was a rough wooden pen with a notice stuck to the front. Curious, I peered in. A child’s plastic spade, a solitary sandal, several drinks’ cartons, some twine and random plastic bits of tat were nestling at the bottom.

Over the past few years, we’ve all become painfully aware of the fact that our seas are choked with things which do not belong there. The good folk at the local council (Lamballe Terre et Mer), God bless them, are taking action. The rough translation of the notice on the site reads: “This box is put at your disposal by the City Council to deposit only the waste rejected by the sea.”

I added a plastic bottle to the haul when we left and it made me consider the writing process.

In my early writing days, I’d be a bit puzzled when I read about an author struggling to make their creation behave in a certain way. “She just wouldn’t do it,” they’d say. “I tried to make her go paragliding in Chapter Nine, but she refused.” Now this seems absurd, written down in black and white. As the writer, you’re the boss. You make the rules. Your characters, surely, should fall into line.

They don’t though, do they? Writing my own first novel a couple of years ago, I found that several of my characters had developed very clear ideas of their own. My attempts to mould them, to make them go places I thought suited them met with blank incomprehension. They refused.

My heroine, Kitty, started off as a 7-year old girl. With each revision, she became a little older, finally ending up in Year 5 (aged 10). As I started to write, I naturally assumed that Kitty would have a younger sister. She was at least partly based on me, and I had had a mum, dad, nana living down the road and a sister four years younger than me. The parents and grandmother flowed from my pen, but the sister wasn’t having any of it. I felt rather bad for my actual sister. Next time we spoke, I apologised for my inability to include her in my novel. Her reaction surprised me. “But Ruth, you were an only child to all intents and purposes. I don’t belong in this book – it’s about you trying to make it through life with what you were given.”

I started a new book in May which is flowing well (and can I say, dear fellow ACW-ers, that it would not have existed without you). I knew what was going to happen, in the main, but as I went along, I found myself coming up with new ideas, some of which made it in, some of which didn't. Enjoying a mid-morning coffee with my husband in the garden one day, I found myself saying in a loud, carrying voice, "I do feel really bad about killing them, you know. I'd love them to survive, but they've got to die if the chapter's going to work." At that moment, two cyclists came past and no doubt heard me plotting. We haven't seen them again since. 

I have no choice. These poor characters will plunge off a dangerous road on their way back from a holiday and there's nothing I can do about it.

Like the random bits of rubbish from the sea which the good citizens of Lamballe Terre et Mer (surely the most lyrically named local council ever) pick up from the beach and deposit in the “bac à marée”, some things simply do not belong in our writing. You can try to put them there, but if they don’t belong, it won’t work. There’s a whole philosophical debate to be had here if we only had the time and space. We’re in charge of what goes down on the page. We know best, surely?

In my walk with Jesus, I’ve often fallen into the mistaken role of boss. I know what goes where. I am convinced that my way is the right one. Like Kitty’s sister, that solitary plastic sandal and the Pokémon fruit drink carton I rescued from the beach in Brittany, these are things where things do not belong.

When I stop trying to seize the steering wheel of life and settle back into the passenger seat, the words flow. The ideas come more easily (most of the time) and the divine driver takes me where I am meant to go. God has given me my heart’s desire. I am a writer. The very least I can do to thank Him is to allow Him to place things where they were always meant to be.

Picture from Pixabay

Ruth is a freelance writer, speaker and poet. She is married with three delightful children, runs a catering company and keeps chickens and quail. She has her first novel in the editing stage, another two on the go, writes poetry as the mood takes her, writes for a number of Christian charities and has her own business writing blogs for small Suffolk businesses. She is a recovering over-achiever who is now able to do the school run in her onesie most days. She blogs at @bigwordsandmadeupstories, covering topics as diverse as King Zog of Albania, a Christingle plagued by punch-ups and tummy upsets, and the inevitable decline of elderly parents. She has abnormally narrow sinuses and a morbid fear of raw tomatoes, but has decided not to let this get in the way of a meaningful life.