Mixing the real and unreal

 This week Havant Writers' Circle had its meeting.  We were writing pieces about the arrival of spring.  It just so happened that we've had a couple of sunny days recently, and I've been out in the garden cutting back shrubs and tidying up.  It was that which gave me the idea for my story.

It never ceases to amaze  me how plants survive the cold winter and spring up every year as soon as the cold is over.  Especially this year, when we've had a few of the hardest frosts I can remember for quite some time.

The thing which pleased me most was the bursting into leaf of my new tree.  It's a small and slender crab apple, which I planted in the depths of last November.  Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, green leaf buds appeared on the bare branches.  Within a week they'd all opened-out into clusters of leaves, and within each whorl of leaves blossom buds were forming.

I'd been at a loss for a subject for my story about spring, until I saw the tree.  We all recycle certain ideas in our writing.  Most of us have themes we return to again and again, and one of mine is of a married woman breaking free from the control of a coercive partner. This isn't something I've experienced, but I've known several women in that situation.

A year or so back I wrote a short story called Fire and Blood for Pens of the Earth.  The main character there was a woman breaking free of a controlling husband.  I had her visiting a slender oak tree in Victoria Park in Portsmouth every day.  She'd named it Arthur, because it would endure like the mythical king.  That character poured out her heart to the tree, and eventually found the courage to leave her husband.

I'd forgotten about that story, until I'd finished writing my new spring story.  That character too had left a controlling husband.  She had moved into her own flat, and last November had planted a new tree.  And here is where fact and fiction mingle.

In the story I had my character anxiously going outside to check her tree stake after every big storm of the winter.  That came from fact.  I braved the cold several times after storms, to go and out check that my tree stake was still solidly knocked in.

What  I did was to take that real action and weave a made-up story around it. I had my character also checking her tree's new leaves, and noticing the blossom buds.  Then I related what was happening to the arrival of spring in her life.  I had her thinking that soon the tree would be covered in blossom, and that she would be blossoming too, into her new life.

The fact and fiction elements wove themselves seamlessly together for this story, and the Writers' Circle members seemed to like it.