It is no secret that I have been exceedingly pushy to the point of being annoying on the theory of read and write to learn to write something that someone wants to read. There’s no sense of entitlement in me, lost long ago in the years of early youth that often needs even falsely placed self confidence to overcome barriers that we would stupidly stop and stare at if we knew better.
With the forced readings of diverse topics, with the flareup of new media in mind and the excitement of the potential mingling with the learning of the classics, I can only hope that I have enough time left to my life to finish–or even get started on–all I want to do.
It is also no secret (since I just can’t seem to keep it all in without exploding in fifty-million pieces that would be severely detrimental to the environment as I would tend to hang like a great grey cloud casting my shadow on the earth’s surface for all eternity) that personal realities have affected me deeply over the past couple of years. Without telling more but enough to eliminate the mystery, my mother’s years with and death of Alzheimer’s, the deaths of both my father and my best friend last year, the family relations deteriorating from settlement of estate, and lack of stable employment in our household right now, have all taken their toll. So I whined a bit and found it impossible to write, instead focusing on trying to comprehend human nature and man’s individual purpose and place in life. This, it finally dawned on me, is a true resource for a writer. How else can you understand a character enough to write about him if you don’t see all the various perceptions that we are capable of? Do I want all my protagonists to think like me? God, no.
So this reading and writing and watching is my newly established classroom. No degree will be given, but then, no graduating end is in sight. It goes on forever until we draw our last breath. Learning.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology