Five Pages a Day (6 page)

Authors: Peg Kehret

BOOK: Five Pages a Day

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“But don't the stories have to be true?” someone in the audience asked.

“The writer must sign a statement that the story is
based
on truth,” one of the writers explained. “That's a pretty broad statement. Usually I base my stories on something I read in the newspaper.”

That's what I do, I thought, only I sell my stories about family problems to religious magazines.

“The pay ranges from three cents to five cents per word, depending on the magazine,” one of the speakers said.

That got my attention! I usually received either a half-cent or one cent per word for my stories.

When I got home, I bought copies of the magazines the panel had talked about and read them from cover to cover. I sent for their writer's guidelines.

Then I wrote a story about how I accidentally saw my son stealing money from my purse. Bob had not done this, of course, but the story was based on truth; a former neighbor had once asked my advice about this situation.

It was a family story with a moral, exactly what I had been writing all along, only this time, instead of submitting it to one of the religious magazines, I sent it to
True Experience
, where it sold for three cents per word.

My story was titled “My Son Was a Thief,” and Bob was outraged until I pointed out that my name did not appear in the magazine.

All the stories in
True Experience
were published without a byline, the phrase that tells who the author is, such as “by Peg Kehret.” Also, I had the good sense to name the son in the story something other than Bob.

Thus began my years of imagining myself in someone else's shoes. I wrote about family problems, medical problems, and social problems. In the process, I learned to write fiction that was based on true events.

Because all of these stories were written from the first-person viewpoint, as if they had really happened to me, my family and friends teased me about all the peculiar things I had supposedly experienced. I loved pretending to be other people. It was like being an actress without the stage fright.

I became caught up in each of my characters so that they seemed real to me. I often thought about them, mentally revising the story, even when I was far from my typewriter.

Once we were driving along in ninety-degree heat when Carl glanced over at me and said, “Are you
cold?
You're shivering!”

“I'm writing about someone whose car plunges into an icy river,” I explained.

He just shook his head.

Because there were no bylines, I could write as many stories as I wanted. Ideas floated through my mind like flakes in a snow globe that's been vigorously shaken, and I often had more than one story in the same magazine. One unforgettable issue of
True Confessions
contained five of my stories.

This meant I had to imagine myself in the minds and bodies of five very different people. Here are the five people I pretended to be that month:

1.	A teenager guilty of a hit-and-run accident.
2.	A middle-aged woman who had the only matching kidney for her sister, who needed a transplant. But the sisters had not spoken for years.
3.	A young mother whose baby had a disease that causes bones to break easily.
4.	A black grandmother who was selected by a white family for an Adopt-a-Grandmother program. (That idea came from an article in the New York Times . The editor of True Confessions sent it to me along with a note saying, “Maybe this would make a story.”)
5.	A construction worker who found a large sum of money inside the walls of a building he was demolishing. He had to decide whether to keep it to pay his son's medical bills or turn it over to the building's owner.

Five stories in one issue! My imagination worked overtime as I envisioned having problem after problem. All of the stories had sound morals, and I was proud of them.

I especially liked to read the “Letters to the Editor” pages in the magazines because readers often wrote to say that one of my stories had helped them solve a similar problem.

One summer I wrote my way through the medical shelf of my public library. Besides the kidney transplant and the brittle bone disease, I wrote about having a heart attack, getting my leg amputated, and refusing to vaccinate my children. On paper, I had a different ailment every week.

I was careful to verify any medical information that I used, either by reading medical journals or by asking questions of my own doctor. But I wrote less about the disease itself than about the feelings of the people involved. I knew what it was like to be sick and afraid. I knew how it felt to lie helpless in a hospital bed. I could write convincingly about people who had those feelings.

As I crafted these stories, I learned to create characters who had believable motivations for their actions. The dialogue had to be realistic. Each story needed conflict and suspense. The more stories I wrote, the more confident I became.

The same editor who sometimes sent suggestions for stories asked if I would write a serial. She wanted a chapter a month for seven months.

I dove right in with a mystery about a haunted house. Telling the story in seven chapters taught me how to write a novel. Each chapter had to have a suspenseful ending that would make the readers want to buy the next issue. Later, when I began to write novels for children, this experience helped me craft the “cliff-hanger” chapter endings that readers love.

A child once grumbled to me, “Why do you always quit right in the good parts?”

I laughed. I do it on purpose, and I learned how by practicing day after day.