As part of my profile, you'll see a short list of books I've been listening to or reading lately--among them are Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair. I just started listening to Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, so I can't tell you too much about that one yet.
The tapes for The Lovely Bones included an interview with Alice Sebold, who spoke about the process of writing her first (and very succcessful) novel. She said that the first fifteen pages or so came quickly---and the rest of the book emerged from that. There's no question that Sebold was influenced by events in her own life, including a brutal rape she endured as a younger woman. I liked The Lovely Bones enough to order Sebold's memoir Lucky.
In both Sebold's and Monk Kidd's work, I was reminded of some unique attributes of fiction. In fiction, we can make things come out the way we wish they would. We can right wrongs and find justice that we might not always see in exactly the way we wish to see it. We can more easily forgive ourselves and think, "Yes, I've made that mistake, too. I've lived that joy, too. I've wanted that, too." We can help others avoid some of the delays we've had in healing while bringing more loveliness into their lives. We can entertain, for sure, and that has value, too.
As a writer, Sebold said, one of the lessons she's learned is to "inhabit your weirdness." She said that she often felt weird as a child and young adult and that finally, now, she can enjoy that and celebrate her personal creativity rather than lament it.
I take that to mean this: do what only you can do. Now is the time to stop worrying about what people think and do that which only you can do.
