Writing From Life Experiences or Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

No, I'm not in Dallas yet. I don't know when we'll be going. Plans can change in the blink of an eye.

I'm working on Turbulence, the third book in the Echoes Series. In that book, one of my main characters is hit by a car and ends up with a broken leg. I researched broken legs in terms of pain and treatment, looking for just the right degree of injury. I think I did a pretty good job.

This last Saturday, in the early a.m. hours, I was able to test my knowledge of broken legs as my husband and I waited in the emergency room with our 13-year old son. Who had been hit by a car. Fortunately, alhamdulillah, his only serious injury is a broken leg.

Many things run through your mind as you sit in an emergency room in the early a.m. hours, trying to stay awake and waiting for a doctor or nurse to tell you what comes next. One of my many thoughts was my story line in Turbulence. I congratulated myself on coming very close to the real experience, while making mental notes on what I need to change when I have time to get back to the manuscript.

Of course I thought about my son, his level of pain, and the prognosis for his leg. That was uppermost in my thoughts. But I also sneaked a few minutes to think about my story. And then I was sorry that I had no one to share my insights. No one to say, You did a good job on that story line. Such is the occupational hazard of the writer--living a story which exists only in your mind.

My son is home, and doing well, but he needs to go for surgery tomorrow because the bones are not aligned. As I suspected, a tibia can be difficult to mend. That's how I wrote the story.

Hopefully the surgery will go well tomorrow. His leg will be properly aligned and in six weeks he'll be able to walk without a cast again. Insha Allah.

I'm tempted to take my manuscript to the hospital with me to take my mind off the operation while we wait. It sounds strange--working on my book while my son's leg is being cut open. But if it helps me relax, it could be a good thing. Most of today I've been a nervous wreck.

I like to create a little trouble for my characters. But my son's experience was very similar to my story line. If I lived in the Twilight Zone I would be very careful.