Where to Begin? With the Bones

“This book is only my first step and above all a means of acquiring a voice, of making myself heard. What I shall have to say when I acquire that voice does not need explanation… I fully realize that I am a very green, very helpless beginner who has the arrogance of embarking, single-handed, against what many call the irrevocable trend of our century… I do not know of a better way to make my entrance into the battle. I believe that man will always be an individualist, whether he knows it or not, and I want to make it my duty to make him know it.”
–Ayn Rand, in a letter to H. L. Mencken about We the Living

Many times I have seen authors interviewed and asked where they get their ideas. Some of them know the answer to the question and some don’t. Some credit a divine and mysterious source that is as elusive as it is inexplicable. As for me, I can tell you exactly when and how Slave to Virtue began. In one sense, it began 10 years ago, but as I never intended to write a book about that experience, I attribute the inspiration to an episode of the FOX show Bones.

As a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, I gave Bones a shot because of David Boreanaz who plays FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. I kept going because I admire the Temperance Brennan character. Going back to the Keirsey temperament sorter, she would be a thinking type like me, but heavily sensation over intuition. That’s why the intuitive-feeling Booth is such a great complement to her character. But that’s a topic for another time.

In the first season of the show, in an episode called The Man in the Fallout Shelter, the cast gets quarantined in the lab over Christmas. It is here we first find out that Booth has a son that no one knew about.

“I have a kid, too. His name is Parker. He’s four years old. His mother wouldn’t marry me.”

It’s an intense and dramatic show, so my emotional reactions were heightened already, not to mention the fact that it was one of those Christmas episodes that are specifically designed to gushify the audience, but that one line had an incredible and unforeseen effect on me. One of the amazing things that fiction can do for us is to clarify issues that in our own lives are muddy and complicated. Because the feelings I have for Agent Booth are straightforward and easy, not remotely personal, I was able to react to that statement with nothing but compassion. That’s not something I had been able to do for the person in my life that could fully empathize with Booth’s feelings. Once the compassion was awake in me, it became increasingly clear that I needed to write the story of my experience. Initially, it was mostly about healing my own wounds rather than exposing them to the world. But I ended up somewhere else.

First, I spent two months writing the story. I tried to keep it focused on the simple experience of a pregnant woman who does not want to be a mother dealing with a man who wants to be a father. I had intended it to be a short story, but I am stocking up on evidence that I’m not very good at expressing myself in that format. The first draft, done in June, was more than 35,000 words, already way beyond short story, at the far end of the novella standards and well on the way to becoming a novel. Here’s a loose guideline of industry standards for those unfamiliar:

Short Story 2,000-7,000 words
Novella 7,000-40,000 words
Novel 45,000-150,000 words

I was not aware of how far I’d gotten until September. At that point I was working on my revisions and adding in an entirely new character. It was clear then that the story was going to be much longer than I had originally intended (it’s at 95,000 currently). When I went back to look at these industry word counts last fall I realized that the story had become my first book. I should mention that I was already working on a book before I started Slave to Virtue. Symphony was supposed to be my first. But somehow, even though I’ve been working on Symphony for several years—I started it before I left Colorado—I never felt like a full-fledged writer until I realized what Slave to Virtue was. Something about having a draft, a full outline, a strong purpose and well-defined theme cemented the idea for me. Perhaps it was more that the end was within sight and grasp. It was an exhilarating and frightening feeling. But there was something else that helped me at the time.

I was rereading Ayn Rand’s first novel We the Living. I’ve read both Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead several times, but this was only the second time I had picked up We the Living. Here’s an excerpt from Leonard Peikoff’s Introduction to the 60^th Anniversary Edition:

“Not a single one of her stories pertained to Russia, which she hated. It was something of a paradox to her, therefore, that she set her first novel in Soviet Russia. Part of the explanation is that, having finally escaped to the United States, she had to get Russia out of her system.”

This passage resonated with me because, as I said, I had never intended to write a book about my personal background, either. In Ayn Rand’s foreword to the book she says:

“I want to say that We the Living is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. It is not an autobiography in the literal, but only in the intellectual sense. The plot is invented; the background is not… My view of what a good autobiography should be is contained in the title that Louis H. Sullivan gave to the story of his of his life: The Autobiography of an Idea. It is only in this sense that We the Living is my autobiography and that Kira, the heroine, is me. I was born in Russia, I was educated under the Soviets, I have seen the conditions of existence that I describe. The particulars of Kira’s story were not mine; I did not study engineering, as she did—I studied history; I did not want to build bridges—I wanted to write; her physical appearance bears no resemblance to mine, neither does her family. The specific events of Kira’s life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values were and are.”

I could sum up Slave to Virtue in similar sentences. This gave me a wonderful new perspective on my story and an overwhelming feeling that I was writing the perfect first novel for me. It was clear that it was the story that I needed to tell before I could tell any others. And it was tremendously satisfying to consider myself in the company of Ayn Rand. If Slave to Virtue is to be my We the Living, I will be proud and grateful.

Before I close this discussion of the story, there’s a few more things I want to say to fellow writers who are engaging in a creative discussion with their own personal history as I have done. Parts of the process are excruciating. It’s a bit like shoving a knife into a scar in an attempt to experience the original wound all over again. It’s brutal. In the end, I found it cathartic. But I also found that while my own wounds surrounding the history were healing, I could see with increasing clarity how many steps back I needed to take. Writers use the phrase “killing your babies” to describe the necessity of editing out your favorite parts for the sake of the story. I think this is even more difficult when you find yourself removing pieces of a story that’s part of your personal history. It’s a sad feeling when you cut an entire character from your story, a character based on someone important to you, a character that was a crucial part of your personal story. But these sacrifices are sometimes necessary when you respect the integrity of the story above historical accuracy. A fiction writer must have that kind of perspective.

Once the first draft was done and I felt like the necessary internal work had been done, I took several steps back and approached the story from a more objective distance. The story is the better for it. The Allyssa character remains very close to me. She shares my feelings about the situation, at the time, and also the wisdom I’ve gained from the time since. That the events of the story are not an accurate portrayal of what happened is irrelevant. The lessons learned are the same. The moral of the tale is intact and hopefully more widely accessible for people who are in similar situations. Stories benefit from a clear focus on what the core issue is. And to this day, a big part of the Slave to Virtue story is the necessity for compassion towards the father when dealing with an accidental pregnancy. And I owe that compassion to Seeley Booth.

David Boreanaz as Special Agent Seeley Booth