Katy's Musing: Sources and Tributaries

When I was 15 years old, I read a novel about Lucy Walter, the first of Charles II of England's many mistresses. The book was called The Child from the Sea and I picked it up because I loved the cover, the paper it was printed on and the typeface used to print it. I read it in great gulps because I loved the way the author, Elizabeth Goudge, wrote. Not just her prose appealed to me; I was also entranced by her clear vision of life and by the liveliness of her characterization. Every person in the story was vivid and real to me.
 

So real, in fact, that I cried steadily, reading the last 100+ pages of the book. Lucy dies alone and friendless in Paris, a city she hates, betrayed by those she trusted, bereft of her child and of the Welsh countryside that had fed her soul. Even now, thinking of the ending chokes me up.

I knew The Child from the Sea had had a tremendous impact on me, but it took me years to realize that part of what I was doing with my first romance, Prince of Hearts, was rewriting Lucy's sad, sad story, her tragic collision with royalty. I was telling the same story, but this time, it was going to have a happy ending.
 

It sometimes seems to me that stories are like rivers, gathering force from many sources. Some of those sources are rivers themselves, but others are little creeks and brooks, hardly noticeable in themselves, but changing the rivers they feed. Countless things make impressions on us and all those impressions feed our imaginations. I think part of our jobs as writers is to keep ourselves open to those impressions, to let the little brooks and creeks we don't notice run free. You never know what story you read, what TV show or movie you watch, is the first little trickle of a new story of your own.