I saw a quote on Pinterest that said, “If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.” It was one of those truths that hit me in the gut. Writing for me is a kind of journaling, a way to work out things in my past, a way to find clarity and meaning. In the writing is catharsis, in the editing is undoing what went wrong, in the story a do-over.
Free writing is something I do when the first edited draft of a story is done. I sit down in the mind of a character and ease whatever drops out onto the page. In there, at times, I find the essence of what I was trying to say, find out what the character really wants, and, probably, what I really want.
My life, my loves, my failures, are all over every page I write. Not all at once, not in a straight line, but everything I produce is peppered with me, and with the people who have touched my life in some significant way. I’ll show you off, tell you I’m sorry, set things right between us. And you may never even know it.
I try to make sense of things I don’t understand, try to undo things I wish hadn’t happened, try to change the ending of certain stories. It’s therapy really. Through my stories things happen that just never will in real life. I think it’s how I make my peace with the past.
One of the stories that will go into my next book (watch this space!) is entitled, “You Can’t Get There From Here,” and I’m thinking it might be the title of the book because the stories focus heavily on reflection, on things in the past that cannot be revisited.
And that’s the hard part. No matter how many stories I write, no matter how many times I try to make the ending that I want, it is what it is and I can’t change it. But I will always keep trying.
