Why We Write These Stories by Yu-Han Chao
One of the questions people most frequently ask a writer seems to be “Why did you write this? What inspired you?” Sometimes they ask, “Is that story about you? Somebody you know? Are you [name of main character]?”
I write a lot of stories about men, women, their families, and even their pets, so there’s no way every single character is me, but it’s true, a lot of them were “inspired” by something true, someone I knew or saw or read about. The most unthinkable of my stories were inspired by what really happened—a cat being mangled and crunched into a bloody, furry mess by one of those Asian garage doors that curl up like a wrap, young women molested or threatened by violent men.
My most current project is a novel inspired by a boy, Andy, whom I used to know. When we were in fourth grade, my family moved from the U.S. to Taiwan, and apparently Andy’s mother liked me enough to offer for me to stay with her family in America so that I could be Andy’s bride when we were all grown up. My mother never told me about this child bride offer until we were in Taiwan. I may have seriously considered it, because I have fond if vague memories of Andy. Over ten years later, back in America again, I ran into my would-have-been-mother-in-law at my mother’s house. My mother told me that Andy (my would-have-been husband) had died, possibly of an overdose from antidepressants. She also casually mentioned that he was engaged to an American girl and they were going to have a huge wedding with hundreds and hundreds of guests. Not anymore, though. All Andy’s fiancé was left with was insurance money.
Bottom line: my former playmate, my would-be husband Andy, was dead. I started thinking, what if I had stayed? Would he still be depressed and suicidal if I had been his fiancé? Maybe I would have made him happy.
So that’s my novel, This Day the Moon Breaks, a young woman wishing herself into the past so that she could change a former playmate’s future. Nothing I do now will bring Andy back, and I will never know what really happened in his life, but writing about him somehow makes me feel better.
Yu-Han Chao is co-blog manager at the Rose & Thorn. She is author of a poetry collection, We Grow Old. Visit her writing and artwork at her Web site.
I've written stories because they seem necessary to help understand the characters in other stories that I've written. In other words, one thing leads to another.
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Linked stories are always enjoyable--thanks for sharing, Bruce!
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