Spending time at the AETA conference today, and thinking about teaching and how much of a role that calling plays in my life. It feels like my writing is also teaching of a sort. I introduce readers to new worlds and situations and through those scenarios teaching about the human condition. My stories may not be literature in the classic sense, but to paraphrase Mark Twain, classic literature is the books everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.
I prefer to be the author people read and take something away from. They may forget I wrote it (they often do), but they remember the lessons born out of the fiction. The way I do that is by creating realistic scenarios. I may tell a fantastical story about a boy growing up on a spaceship soaring to a new world, and the story is really just about a boy trying to grow up and adjust to his developing maturity.
Some Thoughts:
1. At some point in your life you go digging for your past. Not the past you knows but the past before that, the one you feel but never knew. I find myself doing that more and more, trying to capture an immortal self, one that existed before the time I am in and will continue after the time my present self has on this earth. Maybe it is just a thing people do midlife, like buying cars and getting makeovers, even pledging themselves to God. None of those options suit me, so I look beyond to the world and existence outside of time in an effort to discover what or even if that really is.
2. The return of real NFL refs on Thursday was a near perfect story. As a last minute Hail Mary on Monday night created the impetus to bring them back, a last minute Hail Mary this Thursday marked their triumphant return. Life indeed is story.