Anonymous asked: What motivates you to write? What do you hope to change in doing so? What ideas are you pushing for?
When I write essays I am trying to articulate an idea that’s more complex than can be expressed through daily conversation or normal thought. I don’t think as clearly as I would like until I can sit down with a notebook and try to get to the truth. At the moment I’m not trying to change anything, in that most of the time I’m not an activist writer. But that could change. What I’m trying to do with the essays for Thought Catalog is to write about things that happen in the real world, personal things that might be universal enough that other people can relate to them. To provide some resonance and connection with readers. That and write about adventures, which are critical to me as a writer.
With my fiction, it’s an attempt to create a work of pure imagination. To build worlds. The Green and the Gold was as much about a place as it was about the people. Again, I’m not trying to change anything, or anyone. I just want to travel within my mind. The ideas depend upon the story and the themes I find interesting at the time. The next book I’m writing is about friendship and travel. Both are facets of life that are crucially important.
The poems that I put up here come unbidden. Often I will be working on a longer piece, a book or an essay, when the world will open itself up to a wholly unconnected idea that I begin to obsess over. I’ll be on a bus, or walking home from work, or up late thinking, and I won’t be able to get the idea out of my head. That’s when I know I have something. When I can’t shake it. Then I try to render that idea as artfully as I can, and hopefully produce something entertaining and insightful, which I doubt these responses have been, really, and for that I apologize. But thank you for the questions.
