She came to me last night, courtesy of a new friend I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with. The woman I’ve been waiting for, she who avoided me as I was getting to know my other characters.
Gwen has been an enigma, not out of shyness, but because of her energy. She turns out to have a vibrancy that just makes it hard for her to stay in one place for very long. The things she’s experienced at such a young age have led her to seek the surface of things. She sees even the tiniest of the events of her life with astonishing depth and clarity, but she knows all too well what real pain is.
In the Spring of 1940, seventeen year old Gwendolyn lied about her age to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and supported the Royal Air Force as a radar operator. At her first posting in June 1940, she became close friends with another one of the “radar girls”, who was engaged to a fighter pilot posted to the same air base. When her friend’s fiancé transferred to RAF Middle Wallop, she and her friend simply packed their things and followed him there.
It took quite a bit of talking to get them out of trouble, but Gwen managed to charm the operations officer into arranging for the two women to be posted there.
Shortly after she settled in, she met Lew Gravenor, and fell in love. When he left England in 1944, she was just 21, but had put a lot of living into those four years.
And that’s all I’m telling, for now.
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"The way to know any writer is not to meet him in person, but to read what he writes."
-- Richard Bach
"What are we but our stories?"
-- James Patterson
-- Richard Bach
"What are we but our stories?"
-- James Patterson
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5 comments:
bah! You big tease! ;-)
So how IS the writing coming along? How many words??
P.S. I love RAF Middle Wallop. So poignantly perfect for England.
That was great. I can't wait to read your book!
You know, you may need someone to go ahead and read what you have now, hint hint, you know, to help you with suggestions, etc. Hmmm....who could do that???
NaNoWriMo is, uh, not coming along so well. Life has been very hectic at my house lately, and that's all I'm going to say about that.
Believe it or not, there actually WAS an RAF Middle Wallop, which I chose because it was close enough to have played a significant role in the action, but far enough away that it wasn't subject to the horrible bombing so many other airfields were. I wanted a place that seemed almost untouched...to heighten the contrast between the horror in the air and the tranquility of life on the ground. When Gwen finishes her eight hours in the operations bunker, listening to the radio calls of dying men, and when Lew climbs out of his Spitfire, I wanted them to step out into the unblemished peacefulness of the English countryside. The contrast not only presents a hardship for their characters, it adds to the fairytale quality of their relationship.
Also, Middle Wallop has quite possibly the coolest name in all of England.
~Kurt
Fantastic read! Keep up the writing and I agree with Sherri--I think we can think of where you could post more fo your writing to get feedback...
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