You Can't Force a Story That Doesn't Want to Be Told - Melody Cryns

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to write children’s books. I fancied myself telling stories that would take kids to other worlds such as the books I read while growing up – from Wind in the Willows to “real” fiction such as The Saturdays and the Four Story Mistake where I traveled with four kids from New York City to New England, and then I was right there with those kids in Half Magic who found that magical coin. Me and the kids in the neighborhood, mostly the boys around the corner and a couple of the Solis boys up the street would pretend we were on the Starship Enterprise, the spaceship from Star Trek, or maybe I was Magda, the gypsy witch from Dark Shadows, the “vampire” soap opera we’d watch after school.

I’ve tried to hide from it – I’ve announced that I will no longer write the day-to-day adventures of a single mom with four kids, that I’m done with it – it’s time for me to be a real writer, time for me to write fiction! It’s what I love to read – yes, I love memoirs as well, but fiction remains close to my heart.

So I’ve etched out the stories about a girl growing up in San Francisco and put her in various situations. My muse has been good to me at times – first, she’s a girl who loses her younger sister in the fog in Golden Gate Park – but recently I read a book called Year of the Fog by Michelle Richmond – it’s been done already. Then she’s off on a quest to retrieve a three-legged guinea pig named Stubs.

Yes, I’ve fought it, I’ve done everything to get around it. I’ve told my muse that I’m done with it – that I’ve written enough about being the stressed out single mom, all of it. But my muse is cunning and she knows how to push me right back into the midst of it all – and the story that needs to be told keeps popping up.

And I’ve tried so hard to make it change. I’ve even yelled at my muse. She doesn’t listen. She’s a precocious little girl who’s going to do whatever she wants. She says, “You can’t force a story that doesn’t want to be told.”

What’s that supposed to mean? I say sitting here in my kitchen writing on my laptop. What the heck?

So the stories keep spilling out – and somehow, some way it needs to be told because until I’m done with it, I can’t seem to move on no matter how hard I try…no matter what I do. I even started turning in my children’s fiction to my Graduate Creative Writing workshop – sure, the class liked it, but in the end…one student said, “I love your Star Cruiser story where you and the kids are riding in that car with no shocks” or “How come Megan isn’t in these stories from when you left Germany?” I explain that Megan wasn’t born yet.

They all want to know – why I have no idea. I’m in a dilemma and there’s no way around it.
I must tell the story that wants to be told…I can’t hide.