How you get inspired

When I wrote my first novel, my main character was a woman. I didn’t choose her. She chose me. She began telling me all about herself, and she would not shut up. A great character, I thought. But how can I tell her story well? How much more do I know about women than any other guy? Plus, the story I had in mind was set in the 1740s. What were women’s lives like back then? I had no idea.

All of which leads to the woman pictured here, Elizabeth Freeman, who is NOT the character I created for my novel. But Elizabeth inspired me because in 1780, this slave woman from Massachusetts hired a lawyer to take her case for freedom to court, based on a recently enacted state law that said “all men are born free and equal…” She believed the law applied to her as well. A year later, Freeman won her case and gained her freedom. Her story gave me the first suspicion that women in colonial times could create interesting lives for themselves, and not be stuck in demeaning and boring roles. In creating my own character for my novel, therefore, I had more room to maneuver than I had imagined.