WHAT HAUNTS YOU
By Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Maybe
you’ve convinced yourself that the person-shaped shadow you glimpsed from the
corner of your eye must be one of those floaters you heard people can develop
and you will ask your ophthalmologist about. And surely that whispering you
heard was the wind, no matter how breezeless the day. And that whiff of roses
you smelled while walking mid-winter on a desolated stretch of boardwalk must be
someone’s perfume. Still, you have to admit that something haunts you. And
that’s what you need to write about! That’s what will be the most vivid, most
compelling to your readers.
According to dictionary.com, one of the definitions of haunting is “to
recur persistently to the consciousness.” Miriam Kaminsky, my heroine in both Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster)
and my newest novel, Kaylee’s Ghost
(CreateSpace) a phone psychic like myself, is such a big part of my
consciousness that people call me Miriam and I answer to it. And her Russian
grandmother from whom she inherited her psychic gift as I did mine is so much in
my psyche that every morning I see her sitting at my dining room table, sipping
a glass of tea, the steam fogging her small silver-rimmed eyeglasses. I can even
smell the lavender talc that she powder-puffed onto her creased neck.
I’m
haunted by the tragic plight of people who have had to flee from their homelands
because of religious or political persecution as my paternal grandmother fled
her Russian village with her five surviving children (five sons murdered in the
pogrom) and my husband’s parents escaping Hitler’s Europe. The immigrant
experience is always part of my consciousness, part of my writing. Whenever I
see or read about people fleeing countries or huddled in refugee camps, it
doesn’t matter how different their backgrounds, I feel that I know them
intimately, that they are my people. And I know their generations, how they will
carry the experience, be haunted by it.
Another
thing that stays with me, that is part of my writing, my psyche, is those
moments of giddiness that can happen even when things seem at their worst. For
example, both in waking life and in dreams, I can see my maternal grandpa, Eli,
pale and heavy, falling down our long flight of steps like a float in a Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade, then landing dead-still at the foot of the stairs. In
my gut, I feel my childhood terror when my grandmother pulled up his eyelids and
there were no pupils. I can see her pinching his nose to make him swallow the
dose of strong laxative, her cure for everything. Then I hear his stomach growl
to life, watch him hobble top-speed to the toilet.
Writing
about what haunts you will help you stay the long course of a novel, from its
inception to its final word. Watch and listen for the energies of your
imagination—or is it the spirits?—who will guide you and not let go.
BIO:
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is a phone psychic. Articles have been written
about her psychic gift in Redbook, The
Jerusalem Post, the Dutch Magazine, TV GID, and the Long Island section of the New York Times. She’s chronicled her
own psychic experiences in Newsweek (My
Turn), and The New York Times (Lives)
which can be read on her website at http://rochellejewelshapiro.com.
twitter @rjshapiro
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
http://rochellejewelshapiro.com
http://rochellejewelshapiro.com
