Driven to Write 2

I've got two spirits hanging around with me, delightfully so. One is Alice Dunbar-Nelson, though she's been less prevalent in my consciousness than the newest of late, my great aunt Lucinda Gray. Blog readers of the past will know Alice as the early 20th century author, suffragist, speaker, etc. whose life story I intend to eventually tell in either a biography or historical fiction (a novel with close attention to the details of the subject and era.)

My great aunt came to me a few weeks back, while I rested one evening after becoming suddenly tired. While I lay there, I heard the name as clearly as if any voice had used the air waves to transmit the words, "Lucinda." I knew it was the name of the character I'd been toying with starring in fiction for a while. Just that morning or the day before, two characters dropped into my consciousness with great clarity: a grandmother and grandchild.

The name Lucinda was the name of the grandchild. I even recall being my usual self and arguing with the inspiration, "Why would I name a character Lucinda, I don't even like that name." The character assured me it wasn't her first choice either, but the name was non-negotiable. She added that she prefers Cindy and has been called Cindygirl, Lucy on occasion, and that her preference now, for the book, was Luzca.

I liked Luzca and agreed to keep the name Lucinda. A few minutes later I literally zombie-walked to the computer and typed up a few pages that came out in "the character's" own voice.

I'll have to do what I said at some point and outline all the random coincidences that occured over the next few weeks. The highlights include:
*A huge writing pad I special ordered for my classroom arrived on the very day I suddenly felt the urge to start the story boarding, the outlining of the characters. It is indeed a coincidence since the paper was in my car, but I came home, realized I wanted to write and was ready to run out to the office store to buy the paper...and then remembered there was some in the car.
*I have a writing buddy with whom I share works in progress. It had been a while since I sent anything, so I thought the least I could do was flesh out the story's characters and type them up into a spreadsheet of sorts complete with their birthdays, significant circumstances, astrological signs too, and so on.
*I went looking for authentic names of African-American men of a by-gone era and found an old family reunion album. While searching through the names, I stumbled on Lucinda's name. That was when I first learned she was more than a character. There were innumerable details in the "story" that I thought I invented that matched the details in this album I've read no more than once, maybe twice. If twice, a glance through and no serious study because, truthfully, it is my father's side of the family, he died 13 years ago, and I was never ever close to that side of my heritage.
*Then six days after learning Lucinda was real, six days after promising herself and myself that I would indeed get in touch with that side of my family, though I have never in my life extended myself to them and have only been in there presence at my father's funeral and then at my grandmother's three years later, ten years ago and two functions a few years prior to my dad's death at his dignified pleading insistence...I am giving a workshop and am placed next door to a cousin on my father's side. Lucinda wasn't worry that I might flake on calling them, she arranged it to be impossible to ignore them.
*I visited for Thanksgiving and learned that Luzca, Aunt Cindy, was extremely close to my grandmother, and that my father was her absolute favorite of my grandmother's twelve children.

And those are the highlights.

The entry under Driven To Write is the prior blog entry.

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