How my world shapes my writing

I’ve dabbled in different venues of writing over the course of my lifetime. First as a child writing plays for stuffed animals, then at thirteen writing stories of love and lust that my friends and I passed back and forth adding scenes, to witnessing what words can do when an English teacher read one of my assigned fiction projects to the class and all the way through writing children’s stories for my kids, writing murder mysteries when I wanted to kill someone (killed that person off in two manuscripts), writing for the local paper when it fit my lifestyle, and finally settling into western romance.

Each stage of my writing had to do with what was going on in and around me at the time so it only makes sense that I find myself writing about the west. Where I live and the American history I love. Specifically the 1800’s has always been my favorite subject. I love museums, historical sites, and finding bits of history that were so integral to life when this country was spreading and growing.

I think having grown up in a semi–isolated part of the state that was slow to get technology it brought out the pioneer spirit in me. Until I was twelve, my paternal grandparents lived with us. There were seven people in a three bedroom, one bath farmhouse. We had a woodshed where we chopped kindling and stored the wood for the cookstove. When we did get an electric range we still had a wood heating stove and used the wood cookstove when the power went out which was fairly often. The power went out often so we used kerosene and oil lamps, the outhouse, and hauled buckets of water to the house from the ditch. Looking back, it was usually in the winter that the power went out. And on many occasions the pipes from the well to the house froze, and we had to haul water to the house.

My family had a small herd of dairy cows and used an old hand crank separator to separate the milk from the cream. We used the milk for ourselves and the hogs we raised. We made our own butter from the cream and sold the rest to the creamery. We raised 100 chickens every year, butchering all but thirty, which were laying hens. I hated the smell of the wet feathers after you dunked them in the boiling water to loosen the feathers. And disemboweling them and cutting them up-I’d always offer to fold clothes, clean the bathroom, or whatever other chore I could think of than spend hours smelling the feathers and butchered chickens. My grandmother sold extra eggs to neighbors and the local grocery store.

These are all events in my life that easily happened in the era that I write about. I can feel the heat of the woodstove, hear the clank of the metal plates as grandma put more kindling in the fire. Smell the acrid smoke that slipped through the chimney standing in the middle of my bedroom. I'd stand as close to it as I could on cold winter mornings as I dressed. Growing up, I lived the life I write about in my historical westerns.

And now, ranching with my husband, I've encountered many of the obstacles that I write about in my contemporary westerns.

And I grew up in the land of Chief Joseph's Nez Perce and have always had a fascination for them and believe I saw an apparition of a Nez Perce warrior one summer day while riding my horse in the mountains. That moment has stuck with me, and I believe the catalyst that pushed me to write the spirit trilogy.

If you are a writer, what shaped the genre you write? If you are a reader, what is your favorite genre to read and why? I’ll pick a name from the comments and send the winner an outlaw candy bar and couple of other goodies.

Paty

www.patyjager.net
www.patyjager.blogspot.com

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Photos: Paty Jager