Real Life on Pages

What happens when real life bleeds on to the pages of our books?

Sometimes it happens. I know, you never expected that, right?

Some of my writer friends have talked about whether they feel more exposed in fiction or nonfiction. Now my onl

y non fiction book is on business law. Very academic if approachable. I definitely feel more exposed and vulnerable with fiction.

In fact, life has bled onto the page in at least two of my books.

With Sandhill Dreams, I was still reeling from my first miscarriage and secondary infertility as I prepared to write Lainie’s story. So her spiritual journey of where to find God when it seems He’s allowed a dream to die was very much where I was. I clung to promises like those that He will never leave us or forsake us, because I knew in a very real way what it felt like to feel as if He had abandoned me in my pain. I had to cling to those promises until I could

convince my heart to believe them again.

Then in A Promise Kept, I offered that journey to God again as I wrote about a newly married couple who experiences the death of their dream. I wrote a letter to readers in that book that explained why I wrote the story as I did. Then, weeks after the book released to the bookclub and as I already felt exposed and poised to run from reaction, I miscarried again. It felt like such a slap. I have truly wrestled with how God can use me more by allowing this second pain than He could have with the first. I may not know the answer until heaven, but I’m still very much in the throes of that struggle.

So, yes, life does bleed into my pages. Because if I’m going to write real emotion. If I’m going to have a genuine spiritual arc. Then most of the time I will have experienced or thought long and hard about the journeys my characters take.