The way fiction comes to life

I had just com­plet­ed my first semes­ter at Anti­och Col­lege, in Yel­low Springs, Ohio. It was time to go home in NYC for Christ­mas break (six hun­dred miles by the most direct route). My pals and I decid­ed to hitch­hike home. I can­not explain the rea­son for want­i­ng to do this idi­ot­ic thing, save that I was sev­en­teen years old, as were my three friends. One of the guys lived in Philadel­phia. I lived in Brook­lyn. Anoth­er lived else­where in the city. The fourth lived in a NY sub­urb. It was win­ter. The idea that we believed peo­ple would pick up four guys at a time seems absurd. But that was the plan. I can only speak for myself when I also tell you that I didn’t tell my fam­i­ly that I was doing this. 

We start­ed off. I have no clear mem­o­ry of how we got to Erie, Penn­syl­va­nia, but there we were at 1:00 AM. (This was hard­ly the direct route.) I have a vivid mem­o­ry of stand­ing there along a desert­ed street.  No cars were pass­ing. Then by some mir­a­cle a guy picked us up and say­ing all he asked was that some­one talk to him—so as to keep him awake—he was going to NYC and he would take us there. 

I think it was about 6:30 AM when I walked up to the door of my house. I had a key and entered, thrilled that I would sur­prise the family. 

I walked in and was stunned to real­ize I smelled the dis­tinct scent of my home. It was some­thing I nev­er noticed before. More­over, with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds, I had lost the sen­sa­tion, and nev­er, ever retrieved it. 

That was more than six­ty years ago. 

Why am I telling you this story? 

I was recent­ly work­ing on a new book. My pro­tag­o­nist returns to his old home after more than a year’s absence. As I was writ­ing a descrip­tion of that moment, I sud­den­ly recalled the sto­ry I relate above. And, as my fic­tion­al char­ac­ter walked into his own home, I had him catch a whiff of that building. 

This was not planned on my part. It was not antic­i­pat­ed in any way. But if the book is pub­lished and if that moment remains in the text it will share with read­ers in fic­tion­al terms some­thing that hap­pened to me so long ago. 

I’m here to sug­gest that a lot of fic­tion is writ­ten this way, con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly. That one might anno­tate a myr­i­ad of moments in a text and con­nect them to expe­ri­enced moments in an author’s life.  It is the way fic­tion comes to life. 

Can one learn to do this? As Bud­dhist teach­ing has it, “One must become present in the moment.” 

In more mun­dane terms, one must learn to notice, notice every­thing. That’s the way to start writing.