Words have been my whole life. My mother says I read the telephone directory and newspaper at age two, a preposterous but telling story, because when I was young, there were no books. Books were for leisure time, and there was no leisure time when your mother was raised on a Tennessee farm, even though we lived in a New York City suburb, without dairy cows or crops.
Monthly though, handsome hardcover books arrived by mail from a children’s classics series advertised in Good Housekeeping. I stole away from chores and devoured each one, curling into a Queen Anne’s chair. I reread The Secret Garden so many times that my wild, gated garden in Ann Arbor has come to resemble it.
The miracle of reading, therefore writing, began at Burton Junior High School where at the school library you could check out seven books at a time. Every week. A second miracle was an English teacher, Mrs. Ten Have. I can still conjure her auburn hair, the wool plaid suits, that chipped front tooth, those diagrammed sentences. Under her, I learned that writing came to me naturally. It felt necessary, like speaking.
Like Sendak’s Max on his sturdy vessel, writing carried me to places I never dreamed. I sailed through the papers and exams in high school and college. Then came a dissertation, professional articles, books. Outwardly, I was an accomplished psychologist and therapist. But inwardly, my fantasies often turned to writing, the words spilling out into an imaginary paragraph. Occasionally a poem would percolate, from something remembered, like perching on the back of a college couch wearing a turquoise towel robe. I called that poem, “Painted Bird.” Once a poem burst out of me 35,000 feet in the air, after watching my parents wave goodbye from a gate window, as my plane taxied. That poem was titled, “Heaven is Not Up Yonder.”
When I stopped being a therapist several years ago, I shifted from nonfiction to fiction. I still don’t know why. Like falling in love, it was unnerving and unexpected. In fiction, I was supposed to invent people and events which never happened. I was supposed to give myself permission to run wildly away from the probable, toward the improbable. Writing fiction seemed radical, almost defiant. Leaving behind the safe and certain world of facts, and diving into the slippery underwater sea of the imagination was scary. Being in a workshop with other co-frightened authors helps. Having a great teacher helps. I began reading more novels and short stories instead of essays and memoirs. To reduce pressure, I took a hiatus from book agents and publishers.
I simply gave myself permission to make stuff up and play with words. Soon I weaned myself from the inverted triangles of nonfiction writing, with its strict adherence to thesis, argument, and conclusion. Instead, I let the writing be in charge. I put characters through experiences without much idea of where they are going. I stopped crossing out and deleting, even when writing takes me to crazy places and ideas. Now, my only purpose is to write, without the end in mind.
It’s working, although for me, writing fiction is harder than writing nonfiction. But what I get, from inventing and editing and re-editing stories and novels, is far more than a satisfying, noisy exhale of accomplishment. I get quiet insights about what it means to be human in this world. I get surprised. And I get frustrated. A tiny raindrop of a question can pester me for days. Why do I hear Amanda’s boots stomping and clanging up a set of metal stairs which crosses a major highway? Is she mad, or afraid? Is someone chasing her? Trusting that I will find the answer, and it will ring true, is a work in progress.
