Part fiction. Part real. It’s somewhere in between. When someone tells me they write nonfiction, I sometimes reply, “It’s all fiction.” I get strange looks, especially from those who have their heads entrenched deeply in what they term as reality.
I wonder a lot about reality. What is it? In A Course in Miracles, I once read that the only thing that’s real doesn’t change. If this is true, our existence on this plane or Earth, whatever you want to call it, can’t be real. I consider it a test, an experiment, a lab for learning—one giant school.
During the latter part of the Renaissance in 1599, Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, act 2, scene 7: All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Paramahansa Yogananda referred to our lives as projections on a movie screen. Others, such as Elon Musk, said there is a chance we are in a simulation. There was a part of me pondering these very things through the main character, Abigail. Thus, the title, The Imaginary Life of Abigail Jones.
During Covid, I participated in a couple of zoom writing groups. Before Covid, I had engaged in writing groups that met in person. There was interaction with various writers, all writing in different genres. I had a few chapters written, not necessarily in chronological order. The book started as literary fiction or women’s fiction but started taking a different twist. I thought, what if the main character takes a memoir-writing class to work out the demons plaguing her?
Under false pretenses, I signed up for an online memoir-writing class. I had no intention of writing my memoir. However, my main character, Abigail, at the suggestion of her therapist, did. I compare it to an actor getting into character, in this case, a writer stepping into the protagonist as much as possible. It proved immensely helpful.
When I say The Imaginary Life of Abigail Jones is somewhere in between, I admit I used instances from my own life. The ones I used come mostly from childhood, such as climbing up on the counter and devouring pecans my mom had set out for a pecan pie. To this day, I will not touch a pecan. And I drove the car down the driveway at age five, causing quite a stir in the neighborhood. There were a few others. The most challenging chapter I wrote, the one about Abigail’s mother on hospice, evoked tears each time I reread it. With each reading, I relived my own mother’s last three months of life. Perhaps it’s what she signed up for, a part of the earth school. And possibly, I signed up to take care of her the best I could. In my mind, I am constantly delving into the meaning of life, and it comes out in my writing—my fiction. If the threat of an existential crisis arises within, I try to remind myself that it’s all fiction, but at the same time, it’s a learning process.
And then there are the people (the side characters) taking the class with Abigail. While the people taking the class are fictional as are Abigail and Edward, I drew from my experiences interacting with many writers who wrote in several diverse genres. Abigail imagines their lives and what secrets they are recording in the journals the instructor has provided. It relieves her of the pressure she faces in dealing with her demons and offers comical relief for what Abigail perceives as a tense situation.
I believe most authors deal with aspects of themselves when writing. These aspects come out through different characters. Abigail sums up her classmates along with her teacher, Janie. No one is ever as they seem. One such character is Uncle Frank. There was a neighbor by the same name when I was small. He would cross the street and sit under an oak tree with me when I was four. I can’t say exactly what our talks were about. But I remember them being over a four-year-old’s head. Something about them stuck with me. One might say the discussions were embedded deep within my psyche. When I was eight, I learned he had taken his own life.
Although I have no desire to write my memoir, in a sense, I’m writing my life story in spurts throughout all of my books. They say, “Write what you know.” Writing what I know is perhaps a lazy way of writing. I avoid massive amounts of research—not all research since every book I write involves some investigation into details. For example, with Abigail, the timeline was a significant factor. Beginning the book in 1953, my birth year, was easy enough, but when should Abigail take the class? Janie, the instructor, her cell phone was pertinent. Since I was using a cell phone with apps, I had to ensure the year was correct for the advent of cell phones.
If you decide to read The Imaginary Life of Abigail Jones, I hope you will give me your feedback in the form of a review.
From Sally by J. Schlenker:
Is the world constructed of atoms or stories? I think stories, but if it’s constructed of atoms, then the atoms surely weave themselves into stories. There are so many stories with lights still flickering that won’t be dampened.
I embark upon a pilgrimage of sorts, not a pilgrimage to distant places to find answers, but a pilgrimage exploring my own soil. As Dorothy tapped her ruby slippers and said, “There is no place like home,” I, too, awaken to the realization that our roots provide our greatest and wisest vantage point.
Sally walked through these same woods that I now walk through. The most satisfying pilgrimage is finding those sacred places in our own backyard. This is a quest to awaken the spirits who once toiled, shed tears, laughed, and loved here and to connect with them.
Namaste.
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