When Life Imitates Art-Robert Whitlow

            You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Art imitates Life.” This makes sense because every creative person, whether writer, painter, composer, is deeply influenced by what they’ve experienced, felt, and believe. The creative process flows from within, and each person is a reservoir of everything the river of life has deposited inside. This dynamic has produced another axiom specifically addressed to authors – “Write what you know.” When we write what we know, either from life experience or study, it increases the likelihood that the characters created and the world in which they live will have texture, levels of meaning and nuanced interactions that avoid one dimensional and stiff stories.  As a southerner, I’ve never wandered from my roots. All my novels have been set in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, the states where I’ve lived. I know about those places and the types of people who live there. If I suddenly pulled up roots and started writing about Minnesota, I’d be rudderless soon after typing the first “You betcha.” A second axiom for writers is “Write what you’re passionate about.” I agree with this statement, too, but I’m not going to address it here. Instead, I want to tell you about a time in my life in which life imitated art. Here’s what happened.

In 2005, I wrote a novel entitled Jimmy. This story was different than anything else I’d written because the main character wasn’t a lawyer, he was the mentally limited teenage son of a lawyer. In the book, Jimmy lives in a small Georgia town. His mother abandoned the family when he was a toddler, and a few years later his father remarried. Jimmy’s stepmother wasn’t the evil stepmother stereotype of Cinderella.  Rather, she was a maternal archetype, a woman who loved Jimmy with her whole heart. In fact, she couldn’t have loved him more if he were her own flesh and blood. However, there’s a dark side to limitless maternal love. Mama loved Jimmy, but she also smothered him. She was over protective, which meant Jimmy wasn’t allowed to take the risks necessary to mature and reach his highest potential. Enter Jimmy’s paternal grandfather, Grandpa, a retired utility lineman who worked for the Georgia Power Company (my father was an engineer with GPC and I worked there in the summers during college – art imitates life). Grandpa secretly taught Jimmy to climb an abandoned power pole in the grandfather’s back yard. In the process, Jimmy overcame fears and learned to do something unique. Grandpa was a mentor archetype, and climbing the pole was a metaphor for Jimmy succeeding in life. Their special bond is at the heart of the story. If you want to find out what happens in the novel you’ll have to read it.

Two years after I wrote Jimmy one of my daughters went into the hospital to deliver her first child, a boy. When I got the word from my wife that the baby was about to arrive, I drove five miles to the hospital. As I approached the facility I felt the Lord say to me, “He has Down Syndrome.” I immediately dismissed the possibility. A few minutes later, my wife delivered the news that we had a grandson with Down Syndrome. Both us then had the same thought – I was going to have an opportunity to be like Grandpa to this precious new life. The passion that I instilled in Grandpa the fictional character would have a new, real life object – Hunter Whitlow. That was over eight years ago. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time and poured a lot of love into Hunter, and I want to do my part in helping him achieve his highest and best potential. Life imitated art.

Oh, and my wife made me promise not to put an abandoned power pole in our back yard.

Robert Whitlow is the best-selling author of legal novels set in the South and winner of the prestigious Christy Award for Contemporary Fiction. A Furman University graduate, Whitlow received his J.D. with honors from the University of Georgia School of Law where he served on the staff of the Georgia Law Review. A practicing attorney, Whitlow and his wife, Kathy, have four children. They make their home in North Carolina.

A3 had the privledge of interviewing Robert. Look for his interview November 17th, 2016