
I write because without writing, living is like scrubbing newly sunburned skin. It’s too much. Writing is what you do with the milk soft smell of babies, a soprano voice and violins, and the first perfect plum of the season. It’s what you do when feelings and other people’s stories and your own stories get stacked one upon the other, higher and higher, until one day you look up and you can’t see the sun anymore. I write because writing turns everything into words. And words bring in the light.
I write because stories are like splinters – they’re better out than in. Some parts of the story of my first novel Seeing the Elephant came to me when I was a year into a PhD about the Vietnam War. I was way out of my depth… studying, parenting, running a business and almost definitely drowning, not waving.
I write because stories are like splinters – they’re better out than in. Some parts of the story of my first novel Seeing the Elephant came to me when I was a year into a PhD about the Vietnam War. I was way out of my depth… studying, parenting, running a business and almost definitely drowning, not waving.