This is not a question anyone asks me. It's one I ask myself - often these days. Because I'm deep in story-land trying to master a craft that is not mine. I'm a poet. I think I am. At least I was a poet. I used language in ways that were magical and mysterious to me as a writer, as a poet, as a woman. As a human being. I used words even as they used me - demanding expression, stretching and snaking along to mean things I could barely articulate. I both led and followed as they drifted, then dove into grottoes where shadows suggested meanings I had not anticipated. Their history fascinated me. Their power empowered me. Their weight bore me up.
But the stories I'm writing right now are much more straightforward. Read my stories and you'll know when you're at the beginning, the middle and the end. So why am I doing this other thing? Why are stories as essential to humans as food or dogs or horses or heroes. We have to tell them, hear them, write them, think about them, dream them and sing them. And I need to learn something now as I write them. Blindly. In faith. Read More
But the stories I'm writing right now are much more straightforward. Read my stories and you'll know when you're at the beginning, the middle and the end. So why am I doing this other thing? Why are stories as essential to humans as food or dogs or horses or heroes. We have to tell them, hear them, write them, think about them, dream them and sing them. And I need to learn something now as I write them. Blindly. In faith. Read More