Life Imitating Art

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  My characters are not me.  I have definitely had main characters who said things I disagreed with and did things I would never do.  Recently, however, I experienced an uncanny parallel with one of my characters.  

In the book I’m currently writing, two people named Gabriel and Ruth are working together to lead a group at their church.  The group is supposed to discuss a different saint each week.  After Gabriel insists that it is Ruth’s turn to choose a saint, I wrote the following.

That was going to be difficult.  Whenever Ruth looked through the saints in these books, they all sounded interesting.  But only a little interesting.  She couldn’t seem to muster the desire to dig deeper on any of them.

Gabriel leaned back in his chair.  “We have a long time before we need to start on dinner.”

He’d obviously picked up on her reluctance to name a topic.  His patience was unfortunate.  She opened one of the books and began to read a random page.  Then she turned to another page.  It seemed that everyone she read about was born, prayed a lot, then martyred.  She was wondering where that wonderful variety was that someone had mentioned at their first meeting.  Plus, Ruth was very aware of Gabriel sitting nearby, watching and waiting for her to be inspired with an idea.  The pressure wasn’t helping.

She kept reading, skipping to more random pages.  Then she read one line that flooded her brain with too many thoughts to process.  “Oh, wow,” she said.

I had to stop there because when I wrote that part, I didn’t have the foggiest idea where I was going with it.  Oh, wow, what?  I didn’t know what Ruth’s idea was.  Ruth needed to have an idea.  That much I did know.  It’s not a secret that Gabriel is the love interest – that will be apparent in the blurb I haven’t written yet – and the hero needs desirable qualities, like an interest in the heroine’s ideas.  Therefore, the heroine needs ideas.  I was so stuck.

Like Ruth, I had some books on saints because I’d been doing research for this book.  I opened one and started reading.  If Ruth could get inspiration from something she read, maybe I could as well.  My concentration wasn’t great though.  I was skimming.  I was thinking of putting the whole project aside for a while.  Then I found something, one line, that sparked enough inspiration to finish the chapter.  I wrote out the rest of their conversation in no time.  While my own experiences do occasionally slip into my books - both intentionally and otherwise - this is the first time I remember writing something before it happened.