Which Came First?

I saw this analogy to writing long ago and now can’t remember where—I’ve tried but can’t find it online. It went something like:

Think of your initial story idea/inspiration as a mother hen. Inside the egg she’s laid is something hidden and mysterious—that’s your emotional, personal connection to the idea. When that outer idea and inner response come together in a deep, compelling way, you may find yourself with a hatchling—a new story.

(While looking for this analogy on-line, I came across the info that hens sometimes eat their own eggs! Which is horrifying, but who am I to judge a chicken?)

Reading can spur this same, just-hatched sensation. When a writer’s words connect with your life in a way that sends the zing of discovery, the shock of revelation, through you? A bit of shell falls away. You blink in the new light.

I was thinking of all this a few days ago, after reading X. Fang’s brilliant picture book, Broken, to my grandbabies. The plot: a little girl accidentally breaks her grandmother’s favorite tea cup. Mei Mei is overwhelmed with guilt and fear of the consequences, and when her ama blames the cat, Mei Mei keeps quiet.

But her guilt builds and builds (we can actually see it in the illustrations), till at last she can’t contain it and the truth bursts out. Of course her ama forgives her! On the surface, a simple tale. But Fang takes us deep into Mei Mei’s torment. She lets us sit there with the child’s dark, festering secret. It becomes our own.

My grandbabies and I loved the story and the art, the way we do so many books. Days and days and days later, as I drove them home, Nava was relating what I think was a school SEL lesson about not keeping things inside when little Imre burst out, “Just like Mei Mei and the cup!”

I had to squint through my spurting tears. That he still remembered, that he’d connected in such a personal way, that a story could leap off the page and become part of his little being!

Maybe the very best part was that, only a second before, I’d been thinking, Just like in Broken.

Mei Mei and her grandmother mend the cup, though you can still see the crack. Thank goodness, because now they have this story to connect them, every time they pour the tea.