Author’s Statement

A mysterious alchemy happens between a reader and a writer.

 I believe that a true story is created, not only by the writer but by the reader reading. In one sense what story the writer has put down on paper is only her/his own reading of that story – the elements of which have been plucked from the observations, feelings, connotations, beliefs that some spirit has plucked from the writer’s brain and conjured into a narrative. I believe writing to be a deeper - and mysterious - a form of reading.

 It is fruitless to rummage through acts and reminiscence of the person whose hands have gotten a narrative onto a page, to be sculpted and revised, edited, and printed. Fruitless because those pages originated from the messy stuff of actual life. Reminiscence happens always through a very dark lens.  A ‘spin’ occurs when recounting our history and so is ever a kind of lie. Even when only an outline of our lives is expressed, a misrepresentation of the truth of our lives happens with no ill intent.

However, my acts are these: I am a Texas girl born of a Texas girl. I’ve lived in Dallas all my life, except for my undergraduate days when I attended the University of Texas in Austin, and when my late husband and I lived in El Dorado AR for 2 decades. Wonderful teachers, and especially instructors of fiction, have been a major part of my life at virtually every point.

 Most writers recount beginning to write quite early in their lives. Such was not my experience, except for the occasional compulsive adolescent poem stuffed into my bottom desk drawer, never ever to see the light of day. What WAS my experience was quite voracious reading, what I term promiscuous reading because I only cared then (and now) whether what was on the page compelled me to read its next sentence.

 My first serious attempt to write a real story erupted at age 38, believing that I could get the novel done in a summer. Clear bullshit of course, but it did set me on the path I walk to this day: only seeing the step in front of me, making no promises of result, ever longing and ever learning. What I write and how I write it is ever-changing. Such is the primary seduction.

 In the early years, I tried to teach myself through a zillion workshops and books, taped lectures and writing groups. Around 2000, a master teacher showed up at a college near enough to our little town in which I lived. He understood feeble attempts, but the most important thing that happened is that he directed my reading toward some non-negotiable stories to study craft. In 2005 I went for broke, and completed an MFA in fiction at Vermont College, Several years later I attempted a post-graduate semester there with the resident expert in story structure.

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