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I have just returned from an amazing two-week writer's residency at Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island in Washington's Puget Sound, and I owe it all to my latest novel, Flygirl.  It was the first chapter of Flygirl that won me my much coveted spot (only 48 writers chosen out of 400+ applicants!) at Hedgebrook.  Needless to say the book and its heroine, Miss Ida Mae Jones, have been on my mind because of it.

My flight left at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and I spent the previous several days packing and making lists of what not to forget.  My husband dropped me off at the airport, and I ran into check-in desk with my giant rolling suitcase and my laptop on my back, ready and determined to write the good write.  I had butterflies in my stomach-traffic and rain had made me late for my flight.   (Rain is practically a national disaster in Los Angeles, to be approached with 10-mile-an-hour caution on the freeways unless it's nighttime, and then nothing below 80 mph seems to do.)  I made it, but just barely.  Sitting in my aisle seat, uncomfortably sweaty from running through the terminal, stomach still wobbling, I thought about Ida Mae and how she must have felt boarding a bus to Texas to start her training with the WASP.

I don't know how she did it.

You see, Ida Mae is a light-skinned black girl living in 1940s Louisiana who passes for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots during WWII.   Here I was, twice her age, with nothing to hide but some unfortunate sweat stains maybe, and I was a bag of jittering monkeys.  I was looking forward to a beautiful cottage, good food, and a supportive writing environment.  Ida Mae was only 19, and hiding her entire family history and flying under a faked pilot's license.  She could have been sent home in disgrace or even a body bag at any point, but she held her composure, swallowed her fear, and got on that bus.

That's the great thing about being a writer.  You don't have to be as brave as your heroines... at least not all of the time.  Sometimes, if you're lucky the characters you write inspire you to live a little more boldly.  By the time I landed in Seattle and boarded the shuttle that would carry me to the ferry and across the Sound to Whidbey Island, I was calm.  I was feeling pretty good.  Ida would have felt the same tingles of excitement, fingers itching to get a hold of an airplane throttle again the way mine were twitching to start writing my next novel-two girls just raring to fly. 

When you think on it, of the gas and rubber tire rations that would have kept her grounded from the moment the war demanded it, of course Ida Mae was willing to risk a little to have that chance to fly again.  But Ida doesn't risk a little-she risks a lot, with nothing but the work itself to reward her.  And I guess writing can be a bit like that, too.  You don't know if the books you write will ever reach an audience, or speak to anyone if they do see the light of day.  Still, a writer writes.  She has to.  And Ida Mae simply has to fly. 

I moved into my little cottage and set up my computer, unpacked my oversized bag.  Ida Mae chose a bunk at the end of the barracks she shared with Patsy and Lily.  I had my books and my computer game of solitaire.  Ida had her new friends.  We both climbed into our cockpits.  And we flew.

Sherri L. Smith, Flygirl, Putnam Juvenile, Penguin Books