You Can't Force a Story That Doesn't Want to Be Told - Vicki Rubini

You can’t force a story that doesn’t want to be told.

Mary pondered her life. Not much drama, no heroic adventures. The price of doing things by the book. The book…..that’s where she liked to live, with Huck meeting thieves on the river, with Lear feeling the power of a storm, even with Snowball in Animal Farm. Mary read more about life than live it, but what was wrong with that? She really did not want to face the consequences of a storm; no, she preferred to just know what it might feel like. With her literary companions, this was all possible.

There was nothing better than getting all cozy on a couch with her red and caramel striped velour throw, a book in her hand, a cup of coffee and perhaps a warm poppy seed muffin next to her. Someday she did want to write the Great American Novel – oh, the dream of a book tour, with fans waiting for her signature, critics raving about her genius. Hiding her shyness wouldn’t be necessary – it could be passed off as reflectiveness. And the money! Oh, the money! She could buy a writer’s cottage, cute with white shuttered windows and flower boxes full of red geraniums, a stone’s throw from the beach, where she would take long walks and dream about her next best seller.

She thumbed through the pages of Pride and Prejudice. Great book – only one hundred pages left. What should she read next? There was a biography on Chaucer and a Harry Potter book waiting on the tower by her nightstand. They might be fun. Those writers knew about life; you could feel it and see it in their words. Obviously, they had a lot of experiences, great writers always did, or they wouldn’t have been able to write such great novels. Twain was a riverboat man, Shakespeare was a theatre man. But Austen? She lived a quiet little life in a tiny village. Rawlings was a lower middle class single mother when she carved out her fantasy.

As for Mary, she just couldn’t force a story that didn’t want to be told.