Ginny Heslinga wrote an encouraging text to me about the 3 books of my RED HOT: NEW LIFE IN FLEMING novel series. At the end of her message, she asked me if I would consider doing a book about a girls’ basketball team. Book 4 in the RED HOT series has been written (FLEMING HOPE) and is in the midst of being revised and edited, but Ginny’s question got me thinking.
So, what if I wrote a book about a pastor retiring from ministry and looking for something to do with all of his freed-up time…so he decides to start substitute teaching at a middle school…and in the midst of that new world he’s experiencing, the school needs someone to coach the girls’ basketball team?
Throw in a few plot twists and interesting characters, come up with an unexpected climax, and there you go.
Oh, wait a minute! That sounds a lot like my life story. Thirty-six and a half years as a pastor, and then substitute teaching for the last few years, and coaching basketball (although I have been coaching for 30 years).
The hard question! Would the framework of my life story be strong enough to be the basis for a fictional novel? Would it be compelling enough for people to want to read? Or would it be just one of a number of novels that can be a cure for insomnia and end up in the neighborhood’s Little Library?
Does my life have enough purpose and impact that it can be a novel? Those are difficult questions to ask for each one of us. Many of us live lives that resemble a slow dance to a ho-hum monotone melody. There is a lack of energy, direction, and passion. We go aimlessly from one day to another, looking for something that we’re not sure is going to be there because we’re not sure what that “something” is.
What a challenge to write a fictional story that has more than a hint of an auto-biographical feel to it.
And because I just finished coaching our middle school’s seventh-grade girls basketball team in their last game yesterday, I have a ton of writing material. For example, when one of my players tried to help out our opponents by shooting on their basket…in the fourth quarter of a tie game! Thankfully, she missed the layup! Or when a player considered the line on the side of the court to simply be a suggestion and decided to dribble around the defender and then back onto the court. I think she thought she was allowed to go out of bounds, but the defense had to play inside the lines.
Yes, it brings back that old saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction!”
Words from WW Blog 