stories
we don’t know each other’s stories —
which, for the record, don’t have to be real. Sometimes the best + worst are the tales we invent (and may even live) in our minds. I awoke before four am, was out of bed at five. Chai on hand, I have been writing some of what passed through my mind — character and story development, even a new character, someone’s brother whom I mentioned but never brought in. I also noted that names recur in my writing, so I may have to change some in A Tale To Tell. Really? Why? Something to ponder. As I sit here writing, the driving force behind this novel is at the forefront of my mind.
live + let live
Um, no, no, no — live + help live. No, that was not the impetus either, it was more like: what is it to you? What do you truly know? Well, no, that was not it either, though all of these questions revolve around the essence of the tale. The reason for writing was the answer to:
what are others doing?
Plain + simple, yet a loaded question at the time. It happened during the second summer of my widowhood, when I was entirely shut up in my world. Totally alone — cannot emphasize this enough, nor describe it well enough. Perhaps I will at some point. But I am suddenly there, in that living room early that morning, the feeling and question around me right now. As I imagined what others might be doing for the day or the weekend, I questioned how are others different from me? Are they really? Could I speak to someone without realizing it, and vice versa, and make a difference?
— yes —
See, I wanted someone to speak to me and make a difference. I now know that I don’t need to look for my answers in somebody else. Yes, what others say to us may incite inconceivable outcomes, but the truth of our quest is inside of us. And nowhere else. So I did what I do: write when my mind is flooded. And have lived with the seed for the novel for over ten years: we matter to one another. A seed for a lot more than the manuscript.
John Donne
