Gulp.

July 12, 2009

I’ve recently noticed a disturbing trend in my work.

I’m killing off mothers.

Wow, that felt good to finally say…to come clean and admit it.

I’ve been putting a lot of time into my query and getting ready to get the next round out there (thus, my neglect of my blog…) In my rewrite, I’ve been really struggling to find a theme that would resonate with people. But in my search, I found my “mother-slaying.”

You see in my first novel, the mother is killed off in the very beginning. In fact you never even meet her first hand. Her tragic story is revealed through her daughter and her own self discoveries. Yet in a way, the mother is the heroine of the book so I felt rather comfortable with killing her off. But now that I’ve written part of my second novel, I realize that I have killed the mother on the first page. Not a brutal murder, but a sad and lonely accidental overdose.

I’m so disturbed by this trend, in fact, that I’ve rewritten the beginning part so she doesn’t actually die. I’m not sure yet which way I’ll finally let it play out. WHEN (not if, right?) I finally do get published, do I want to be the author known for writing about dead mothers?

I seem to have this Bambi-esque theme through my stories in which the mother has to die for the daughter to find her legs…her true self.

Hmmm…. How’s that for a theme? 🙂

Have you ever discovered an interesting trend in your own writing – was it liberating or disturbing?