Runaway ~ the reality of homeless youth in fiction.

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Donna

I was a teenage runaway.

There, I’ve said it.

I left my parental home at the age of fifteen. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was still early spring, so it would have been right around my 15th birthday.

At the time, I wasn’t aware of being young. I’d never really felt like a child, anyway. I suppose you might say I was born an ‘old soul’.

I have no photos of myself from that time period. The closest is this Metropass picture, taken after I found my feet again. As I recall, I was painfully thin; full of bravado, but truthfully more than a little fragile.

A year later, just two weeks short of my sixteenth birthday, I married my first husband. I won’t mention his name. I doubt anyone I know would know him, but hey, why take a chance?

Suffice it to say, the marriage didn’t sing.

Gritty is the word that comes to mind when I remember those years. A writerly word, don’t you think? Captures the mood of a teen living on the edge, desperately trying to clutch hold of society’s fringes and hang on for dear life.

I seldom talk about specifics. Why bother? Things happened. I survived. That was then. This is now.

But I remember.

Maybe that’s the reason I so often find myself writing about young people — the abused, the neglected and forgotten… the teens we secretly wish would just ‘go away’.

My news for 2014: I have a new novel underway.

It’s in the early planning stages, so I can’t say much about it, except that it will draw on those teen-experiences of mine.

The best of art comes directly from the soul. First you live it — then you express it.

Wish me luck!

Donna Carrick – January 8, 2014

Character Driven Part I: Peeling back the layers

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Donna

Daphne, by Donna Carrick It usually begins with an image.

The tilt of a head, or the turn of a hand.

He is standing in the doorway of a darkened room, daylight streaming around his silhouette, obscuring his true nature from the mind’s eye.

Or she is sitting alone on a curb. She is looking away from me, at nothing, I believe, as a tornado of urban noise swirls around us. I cannot catch her eye; she will not deign to acknowledge me. Her story eludes me in the beginning. She will not speak, but needs to be coaxed. Slowly, she rises to her feet, and the great journey of discovery begins.

For me, this describes the art of writing.

There is an image of a person, male or female, a mere shadow hovering on the edge of my consciousness. Yet, in my deepest soul, I know a story is waiting to be told.

So it was in the case of my first published novella, The Noon God. In my mind I saw Desdemona as clearly as you would see the person next to you on the bus. I saw the rush of long golden curls, the ice-blue eyes, the determined forehead. And I saw the father she had once adored: J. Caesar Fortune, broad-browed, full of pride, seemingly indestructible.

And yet, like all who claim mortality on this earth, capable of being felled. Capable of death.

Slowly, his legacy revealed itself to me: the many books, the lectures, the mass appeal of a life’s work.

I sensed the sunlight that shone always on this great man…no, not on him, really, more like from him. As if he radiated an inner light, casting the darkest of shadows on all who loved him.

So there was Desdemona, the disillusioned daughter of a renowned author. And there was Caesar, a man of singular passion, driven to greatness.

Debbie2 Small And then, in the varying recesses of that stage, there were ‘the others’, Lucy, Gail, Uncle Willard and Angelina, those lesser loves, whose lives were caught up in the vortex of that passion, and each, in its own way, damaged at the core.

The Noon God was inspired by and is dedicated to my late sister, Deborah, who died at nineteen years of age by her own hand. Like any survivor of family suicide, I’ve long been compelled to try to understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of such a final act.

I think it’s fair to say my novels are all primarily ‘character driven’. From my earliest as yet unpublished works to my latest, The First Excellence, I have been led around the globe by an obsessive need to peel back the layers, to discover the truth behind those silhouettes.

And as with most art, great and small, the true quest remains: the discovery of self. The telling of a story more real than imagined, by imaginary players on the stage of our minds.

Words, beautiful words…

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Donna

As writers, they are what we see when we close our eyes. They are our tools, our materials and our finished products. They have tremendous power over us. They can persuade, entertain, teach, inform, seduce, anger or sadden us. They lead us into our nightly dreams, and they greet us each morning as they march into our newly-awakened consciousness.

Author Janet Fitch (White Oleander, Paint it Black) once revealed in an interview that before sitting down to write she first reads passages from her favourite poetry. Doing so prepares her mind for the elegant flow of prose that is found in her books. Her skilful use of the words themselves is a testament to her love of them.

Many writers struggle with the modern reader’s expectations. How do we know whether we are saying too much or too little? Readers today have no patience for detailed description, long, eloquent passages that become redundant and insult their imaginations by leaving nothing undefined. And yet the educated reader still longs to see something of the art in our words. He wants to be elevated by the imagery as it unfolds.

A well-chosen phrase in the hands of a confident writer is like a bow and arrow in the hands of a skilled archer. One does not want to overshoot the mark with sloppy or flowery words. Nor does one wish to fall short and leave the reader wondering what the heck is going on. What we seek most ardently as writers is the ability to say exactly what we mean, in a manner that allows our stories to move forward while delighting our readers with some sense of our personal flair.

The goal then becomes two-fold as a writer of fiction: to use the language with precision, saying what we mean, and to also seek out subjects that will have ‘meaning’ to the reader. It is not enough to say what we mean, if what we mean is meaningless. As writers, people rely on us to broaden our perspectives, and to present them with ideas that will take them beyond their own existences.

Much is made of the old writers’ adage to “write what you know”. Today’s writer understands that, unless his personal knowledge of the world is already exceptional, he will be expected to leave his comfort zone on a regular basis. On the other hand, we don’t want to lie to our readers. That’s where research comes in.

I view writing not only as a tool to communicate ideas to the reader, but also as a motive for broadening my own understanding of the world. For me, this is where the real ‘art’ of writing is accomplished — in seeking out new ideas to grapple with so that I can present them to the reader with confidence and, I hope, with grace.