February 12, 2017

It’s been a number of years since I’ve actively written fiction. I’d forgotten how maddening and inconvenient characters can be. How they insist on introducing a blind and mute prophet as their only companion, flinging themselves to places where their author could never travel, kicking the plotline off the rails just when you start to think you’ve figured it out. But then, this is what I love about writing fiction—watching the story unravel, then tie and untie and retie itself into knots—and really, isn’t life itself just like this? Isn’t love? That slow walk into someone else’s world. How much richer and more sincere our experiences will be, if we have patience and humility enough to allow them their maddening inconvenience.