By Cathy Jewison
Copyright © Cathy Jewison, 2004. All rights reserved.

People sometimes ask where I get the ideas for my stories and how I go about developing them. Here’s how I came to write “Diamond Girl,” a short story published by Black Moss Press in North by North Wit: An Anthology of Canadian Humour.

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One afternoon, several years ago, I was sitting in the food court of the Edmonton Centre mall, munching a taco and watching people wander in and out of the public rest rooms. I hadn’t made a deliberate decision to spy on the bathroom habits of the food court habitués – but like any food court on the planet, no part of it holds much in the way of visual appeal and I just ended up facing the washrooms.

As I dabbed hot sauce on my taco, I noticed a young blonde woman in jeans and a red T-shirt heading to the ladies’. Moments later, a man in a suit hurried for the gents’. A woman in a summer dress and sandals, who had been sitting nearby, tossed the remains of her egg salad in the garbage, slung a large bag slung over her shoulder, and also made her way to the public conveniences. My taco was half-eaten when Jeans-and-T-Shirt Woman emerged; I was making good progress on my Mexi-Fries by the time the Dress Lady re-appeared, and was slurping the bottom of my iced tea when Suit Guy surfaced. There were others who came and went, of course. And like any conscientious writer, I scrutinized each one and indulged in unsavoury speculation about who they were, why they were in the mall, and what ghastly secrets lurked beneath their insipid exteriors.

As I nibbled the icing on my dessert empanada, it occurred to me that they probably were as boring as they looked – after all, they came and went with utter predictability. Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to nip down to the Bay and buy a red wig, a pair of shades and a light jacket? If I hid them in a tote bag, I could enter the public washroom as one person, and leave as another. I’d seen it done in the movies umpteen times. And when I exited the washroom, would I melt unnoticed into the crowd, or would the man two tables over stop chewing his fried chicken and stare after the mysterious redhead who materialized out of thin air?

I never bought the wig, and I’ve never tried a quick change in a public washroom. But the idea has stuck with me, and if I’m too cowardly to live my fantasies, there’s always the next best thing – living vicariously through the characters who populate my short stories. After that day in the mall, I started to build a character for whom subterfuge is a way of life. Since I write humour, I couldn’t create a character who actually was a spy . . . so I came up with a courier named Gerald who felt his job demanded the protection of frequent costume changes. And anyone who’s seen a James Bond movie knows that any operative needs the tools of the trade – a secret camera or a clandestine recording device, at the very least. While James Bond has access to a lab where spy gadgets are turned out like toys at Santa’s workshop, where would a freelancer like my Gerald get his accoutrements? Radio Shack, of course. Every time I received a new flyer, I’d go through it, gleefully taking note of the newest gadgets.

So when the Ladies’ Killing Circle, an Ottawa writing group, called for stories for a new crime anthology, I already had a protagonist crying to make his literary debut. The anthology required each story to be named after a song, so I chose Johnny River’s “Secret Agent Man,” in honour of Gerald’s personality quirks.

My character, however, was in desperate need of a plot. Since I set my stories in Yellowknife, I didn’t have to look far for a crime for Gerald to foil – a diamond heist was a natural. And a leisurely review of Canadian Diamonds magazine gave me an idea for the perfect target – an elaborate necklace, the signature piece in my imaginary diamond company’s jewellery collection.

With a rough idea of the plot, it was time to give more consideration to Gerald’s character. Let’s face it – a Yellowknife courier who thinks he’s always being followed by malefactors has an extraordinarily rich inner life – a sure sign that his outer life isn’t going so well. A stint in the food service industry taught me that waiting tables is probably the most thankless job around. I assigned Gerald to the banquet staff of a local hotel so he could make some money while getting his courier business up and running. Sadly, the banquet job would not pay a lot, so he'd still be living with his mother.

James Bond’s way with the ladies is a key aspect of his character, and something that Gerald needed to emulate . . . except that he would be ridiculed, rather than admired. A low-rent Lothario, he starts the story unable to relate to women, objectifying them à la James Bond. As a means of showing character development, I dress him as a woman part-way through the story. It was during this process that I changed the title of the story to “Diamond Girl.”

I finished the story a couple of days before the anthology deadline, and sent it in. It was rejected (with good reason). In the meantime, I had seen a note soliciting material for another anthology called North by North Wit. A new market. I sent the manuscript to writer-pal extraordinaire Anita Daher, who provided me with many, many comments and questions. Problem was that I had no idea how to reconcile all the points she raised. Then she asked one key question. Why was Gerald so obsessed with James Bond? She suggested that maybe Gerald’s father had left the family when Gerald was a child and, unable to face the truth, he decided his dad had been kidnapped by spies. As I tried to figure out how I would integrate that into the story, all the pieces fell into place, and I knew how to resolve my outstanding issues. I sent “Diamond Girl” to North by North Wit, and was notified of its acceptance within days.

Most of my stories start this way – with a well-fleshed-out character desperately seeking a plot. There are more of these people rattling around in my brain. I hope they all eventually make it onto paper.

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An abbreviated version of this article was published in the Territorial Writers’ Association Spring 2004 newsletter.
 


Copyright © Cathy Jewison, 2008. All rights reserved.