*Written with Veridion Smart

Some stories are planned. Others simply refuse to leave you alone. I’ve learned that the difference matters.

When I first began writing TIP THE PIANO MAN, I didn’t think, ‘I’m going to write this novel.’ In fact, I wasn’t even thinking much about writing a novel at all.

I was too angry to write, and I lived with that anger for a long time.

In 1984, when we discovered that our little girl had been molested for almost four years by a close family friend, someone we had trusted with our lives, I grew obsessed with trying to wake people up. Ignorance is the greatest enemy of loving parents, I believed, and my husband and I were living proof of that. So, I spoke to all kinds of groups, talked to the media, worked with many child advocacy organizations, and ultimately found myself standing in rooms with people who had the power to change things.

In other words, I put myself directly in the middle of it. I had to slog through a sewer day after day, but I was determined to make a difference – and I think I did. When I look back on that time now, as painful as it was (and still is), I know that we and our fellow advocates accomplished important things for children and families in distress, and I’m satisfied that we did the best we could. 

But eventually, I burned myself out so completely that my body finally said, ‘Enough.’ I fell apart in the grocery store because I couldn’t remember how to write a check, and my husband had to come pick me up. My mother even had to move in with us for a while because I couldn’t care for any of us, and I spent a long time simply trying to put myself back together. I didn’t know then that the experience would eventually become the basis for a book. 

But that’s the strange thing about stories. Sometimes they sit quietly inside us for years before they decide they’re ready to come out.

I’m often asked where my ideas come from, and sometimes the answer is easy. It can be a place, a person, or something I overhear in a restaurant. Sometimes it’s a strange little detail that refuses to disappear.

Other times, the answer is much harder.

Some stories come from places we’d rather not revisit. Some are connected to people we loved. Some come from experiences that changed us in ways we didn’t understand or even realize at the time.

And sometimes, the story doesn’t arrive as a fully formed idea. It arrives as a feeling. A question. A memory. A character who won’t leave your head alone. You may ignore it for a while. You may even convince yourself you’ve forgotten it. But then, years later, something happens and suddenly you’re thinking about it again.

That’s when you realize it never really left. It was just waiting in the wings for you to acknowledge it. 

And so, I sometimes wonder if writers are simply people who don’t know how to let go of anything. Think about it: We collect things. We collect memories, conversations, faces, places, little pieces of other people’s lives. We may not know why we’re storing them away at the time… 

But then, one day, something clicks and a memory becomes a scene. A question becomes a character. An old experience becomes the emotional foundation for an entirely new story.

That doesn’t mean every book is autobiographical. It certainly doesn’t mean every character is the author. But writers inevitably leave fingerprints on their work. We write from what we’ve seen, what we’ve felt, what we’ve feared, what we’ve loved.

And sometimes, we have to write what’s broken our hearts.

I’ve come to believe that some stories refuse to stay buried because they still have something to say. TIP THE PIANO MAN grew out of something painful in my family’s life, but it isn’t simply a story about pain. It’s about what happens afterward. It’s about survival. It’s about healing. It’s about the things people carry silently and the possibility that they can eventually find their way toward something better.

That’s one reason I think writers sometimes have to be willing to go places that aren’t particularly comfortable. If we only write what’s easy, safe, and familiar, we may never discover what the story was really trying to become.

And perhaps that’s true outside of writing, too. Maybe the things we keep avoiding aren’t always the things we should forget. Sometimes they’re the things we need to understand.

I’m still learning this, and every book I read (or begin to write) teaches me something different. Each character leaves something behind. And every journey, whether it happens on a page or somewhere out in the real world, has a way of changing the person who takes it.

Maybe that’s why I keep writing…because there are stories I still haven’t told. Places I haven’t explored. People I haven’t imagined. Questions I haven’t answered. And somewhere inside all of that, there may be another story waiting patiently for me to notice it. 

So, I’ve stopped asking why certain memories stay with me, and, instead, I’m beginning to ask a different question: What are they trying to tell me? After all, sometimes you don’t choose the story. Sometimes, the story chooses you.

And when that happens, all you can really do is listen.

  *Rosetta Diane Hoessli has written two novels, WHISPERS THROUGH TIME (2021) and TIP THE PIANO MAN (2024), and is working on a third, JOURNEY OF THE HEART. She’d love to hear from you, and you can contact her at thompd2011@gmail.com, on this website (https://www.rosettadhoesslibooks.com),  or at https://www.facebook.com/RosettaDianeAuthor or https://www.facebook.com/Ronni.Hoessli. Have a blessed day!