THOUGHTS ON WRITING

At this time, in my senior years (I am in my 80’s), I’m a writer with a need to communicate. I do my best to do that through the fiction I create, and through both this website and my blog. I have been a singer, a voice teacher, a college opera director, a refugee cultural orientation teacher and site coordinator, a therapy clinician, and some other stuff. Wow! That’s a lot. Well, it’s been a long life. Through all that time, all those steps on the long path to now, I’ve had an itch to write. In fact, I’ve kept notes on the various books I’ve wanted, someday, to write. At last, I’m doing it, and finding an increasing sense of completion with every word I write. Here is a passage quoted from William Faulkner’s Speech of Acceptance when receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature. It expresses something of why I write. I have altered it a bit, as indicated, to change its male oriented, non-inclusive language.

“I believe that humans will not merely endure: they will prevail. They are immortal, not because they alone among creatures have an inexhaustible voice, but because every person has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poets’, the writers’ duty is to write about these things. It is the writer’s privilege to help human beings endure by lifting their hearts, by reminding them of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of their past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of humanity, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help it prevail.”

And so, I write, keeping my focus on those reminders mentioned by Faulkner, particularly those of courage, compassion, and hope, though sacrifice and disappointment certainly appear as well. Not that I am unaware of the baser attitudes and behaviors often exhibited by my fellow human beings, but that I refuse to write only or primarily about that. Rather, I choose to focus more on those redemptive human attributes that give me hope for the future of our species and, yes, for our planet. I have not yet published a book, though I’ve begun work on my third novel. I have one that I believe is ready to be offered to readers. Its title is The House. It’s about a very special community of people struggling with many of life’s problems. I believe it is a book in which you, as a reader, may find hope. It will be available soon.