Westmont Magazine A Novel Approach to Writing

Riding the elevator to her Hong Kong apartment in a gleaming, 44-story structure, Suzanne Woods Fisher ’80 heard many languages spoken. Her husband, Stephen, worked for Clorox in the South China Sea country, and the family became immersed in a fascinating foreign culture. “The first time we went to his office, I thought the map looked odd; Asia was in the center, not the United States,” Suzanne says. “After that we no longer saw the world in quite the same Americanized way.”

Her four children went to an international school and participated in service projects in places like India and Mongolia. “It was a special and unique time for our family,” Suzanne says. Returning to the Bay Area four years later required some adjustment. “We hit the ground running,” she says. “Suddenly my eldest was going to college, and the kids were driving.”

The move presented some challenges to Suzanne as a mother, but even more as a writer. With the advent of the Internet, she had continued her free-lance writing career in Hong Kong, becoming a contributing editor of Christian Parenting Today magazine. Stories often grew out of her experiences as a parent, and she found it helpful to work through troublesome issues in prose. But after she returned to the United States, she found it difficult to write.

Since her days with the Horizon at Westmont, Suzanne had focused on non-fiction, but she now turned to novels. Her niece Hillary How ’05 had recommended a book she read in a class at Westmont, “If You Want to Write,” by Brenda Ueland. Inspired, Suzanne secretly started a story set during World War II, and the exercise unlocked her creativity. “One thing led to another, and I ended up with a book,” she says. “‘Copper Star’ (Vintage Romance Publishing) appears in stores in June. It tells the story of a young woman who flees to Arizona after conspiring with Dietrich Bonhoeffer to assassinate Hitler.

“I found I became a better non-fiction writer after writing fiction,” Suzanne says. “I work hard at writing and honing my craft, and I was amazed at my improvement when I stretched and let myself go.” She has since signed a contract for the sequel to “Copper Star,” completed “Grit for the Oyster,” a devotional book for aspiring writers and written a contemporary novel about a young woman going blind.

Her experience with guide dogs inspired the latest book. Desperate for a dog, her then 8-year-old son decided to raise a puppy for the blind because his father thought pets should have a purpose. Naturally, Suzanne ended up with the task, and she has since trained five dogs. After reading President David Winter’s profound reflections on losing his sight, she modeled a character in the book after him, a man who mentors the heroine.

“My friends worry they will end up in a story,” Suzanne says. “They do; that’s the fun of being a writer.” When her son wanted to join a fraternity, she researched the Greek system and wrote about Christians who pledge. “I learned that God can’t be crowded out of any environment, even a fraternity,” she says.
With her oldest daughter graduated and getting married, a son and a daughter still in college, and her youngest son a freshman in high school, she should have plenty of material for future stories, both fiction and non-fiction.