Betty Smith – JULIA MCDERMOTT

Yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back.

– Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

As a writer of fiction, I draw from my own experiences. But I also tell stories that I make up, out of my imagination. I don’t tell a story the way it happened, but the way I thought it should have. *

So “yesterday” is a good place to look for ideas, even though in life, you can’t get yesterday back.

Lots of things that happen in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX really happened (or a version of them did), but lots of other things didn’t. I did spend a year in France when I was young, and I missed my boyfriend back home. When I wrote the novel, I got to tell the ending of our story, not as it really happened, but as I wished it had.

My latest novel, UNDERWATER, isn’t based on an experience. But some of the characters’ internal conflicts are drawn from my own struggles. The water “down the river” isn’t always calm. Even if it looks okay, in my characters’ lives, there’s a lot lurking below the surface: Guilt. Lies. Jealousy. Hurt. Bitterness. Regret.

The tension builds, and as an author of suspense, I know that

worry = suspense.

As I wrote UNDERWATER, I knew that its “yesterday” had to be problematic at best. I wanted to keep you, the reader, worried about what was going to happen next.

And since by nature, I’m a worrier, I just had to let the river flow.

* to paraphrase Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: “A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.”

During 2013, I read some good books, one of which was A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Betty Smith. Being so attached to Chapel Hill, NC, where I went to college, you’d think I would have read it a long time ago – or least known that the famous author lived in the town for many years. I didn’t even know about the Betty Smith house, though I’m sure I’ve walked by it before.

I knew about the novel, though, and last summer, when my daughter (soon to be a freshman at UNC) was looking for something good to read, I suggested it to her. She read it, and then I did and immediately added it to my list of all-time favorite books. One of the story’s most memorable lines is spoken by the main character’s grandmother:

“‘Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.'”

Two characters in my latest novel, UNDERWATER, struggle with forgiveness. One of them faces the difficult task of forgiving someone who refuses to express remorse for a past wrong. The other deals with her own internal feelings of sorrow and shame. For both, the decision to focus on gratitude instead of hurt makes forgiveness not only possible, but much easier.

Like love, gratefulness may seem just to happen, but it’s really a choice. Another idea the story examines is the responsibilities – and limits – of generosity. When someone gives us a gift expecting nothing in return, we feel grateful, we want to reciprocate, and we want to be around them more. When the “gift” has strings attached though, we feel indebted, and we want to create distance from the giver.

While it’s good manners to reciprocate a gift, it’s not always possible to do so at the same level. Gratitude is possible, however. When a gift has strings attached, the giver doesn’t want a gift in return, or even just true gratitude. Instead, (s)he wants the recipient to feel indebted, and then to do something or to behave a certain way.

Forgiveness is a gift for which we should expect nothing back, however. No strings attached.

And its cost is nothing.

Tag: Betty Smith

Getting yesterday back

The cost of forgiveness