We all cry. Some cry buckets. Some fight to cry only in private and seldom then.
Tears are part of being human, showing the pain we experience emotionally, mentally, physically and even spiritually.
Women generally cry more easily then men if for no other reason than as little boys they were fed the message that boys don’t cry.
According to Jackie Wilson who recorded Lonely Teardrops which became a number one hit on the R&B charts in the late 50s, boys do cry. And soak their pillows.
In another song, this one from the 60s, sung by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, big girls don’t cry either. Wrong.
Big girls cry, boys and men cry. We all cry.
But in my novel, In the Land of the Vultures, there is a strong reason for not crying, almost a life and death reason.
What if you lived in an environment where every drop of water was precious—even your tears?
What if the river that nurtured and nourished the people and animals of your village dried up to a muddy trickle?
What if the villagers were dying around you from starvation and thirst? And the animals that fed you and gave you wool for spinning or milk for making into cheese were dying as well.
You’d want to cry. Of course. But would you? And if you did cry, what would you do about those tears? Would there even be tears?
Tears are precious. In the book, my heroine cries because she’s lonely, afraid, and in a situation she doesn’t know how to handle.
And understanding the preciousness of water, she knows what to do about those tears.
Thinking about that idea gave me both a first scene where my heroine shows her compassion, and a scene with the hero later on that led to a sexual awareness between the two.
And, eventually, she stopped crying lonely teardrops.
