07 March 2007

Unifying theories

I understand the impulse to find a theory of everything, to find faith, to find the thing behind what everything appears to be, the wizard behind the curtain. I try to find meaning through writing, often feeling I am sending out tendrils in the dark. I perceive an importance to living inner life out loud and trying to find my path that way. It feels like groping my way down an unfamiliar and dark hallway. Perhaps the hardest thing is not judging this process but letting it unfold.

So I am picking stories to tell and questioning why these ones and how can I tell them best and to whom do I want to tell stories, anyway? I admit I harbor this secret fear that writing fiction is just another little drop in a big bucket of words that few people are interested in. At the same time I have this singer-songwriter just clamoring to get out. I guess I want to sketch out little stories that way.

And yet I feel the pull to go to my novel's main character's dark side, to let her fall badly and have to pick herself up again because there's no one who can do that for her. I suppose I believe that is some of the thread that binds us. Falling down, getting up again. So I write, and at the same time prepare story pitches for articles about film festivals, people who create their own restaurant spaces, and epiphanies inspired by Indian dance performances and Barbie magazines. It's all I can do.

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