Manifesto
I. Beginnings
- I write poetry and prose and love to dance on the border between those categories. I write non-fiction as well as fiction.
- I prefer long-form stories, which suits the way my brain works as well as my preferred writing habits. With long-form pieces, there is more space to stretch a narrative, the stories can sprawl out messily, and there is always a next step for me to follow when I sit at my laptop in the morning.
- There are three pathways that take me into writing. On the first, a concept appears. This could involve a world, a character, or a situation, and this pathway often leads to a novel with some sort of speculative element, generally a soft sci-fi or fantasy.
- A second pathway begins and ends with poetry. Perhaps an image or a line enters my mind, and I just have to sit down and see where it takes me. This pathway is paved with emotions and shadowed with worries and questions and fears. It is one of exploration and sudden inspiration.
- The third pathway lies between the first two. It begins with a desire for structural experimentation. This pathway is where I play with interweaving poetry and prose, with incorporating music, with zooming back to consider how words appear on the page. Often, I will sit with a structural idea for months or years before the narrative that will express that idea comes to me.
- My favorite part about writing is writing itself. Creating new drafts, playing with words on the page.
- The hardest part about writing is the temptation to place my worth, my value, in my writing. The only solution I have found is by remembering that my worth comes through my relationship with God, not through how well or badly I do something. I have to remind myself of this often.
- I love symbolism. I love stories that mean something, that say something about us, about humans, and about the world we live in. Often, the significance of a story draws me in before I discover the plot itself.
- I love stories with complexity. Life is messy, people are messy, and what better way to explore that all than through stories?
- I love exploring psychology and emotions, especially in relation to the struggles of my generation. We have grown up with social media whispering to us to place our value in how others view us. Many of us—myself included—struggle with anxiety and depression, with unhealthy thoughts about body image and food consumption, with isolation and loneliness and fear. Many of my stories are about belonging, a search for a place to belong, a search for a people to belong to.
- A starting point:
- The purpose of poetry and stories are to communicate deep, emotional truths about the world and our place in it.
- The purpose of poetry and stories are to communicate deep, emotional truths about the world and our place in it.
- A finale:
- I write to process the world, to make sense of myself and my place in it. Writing is how I move through life, how I grow and adapt and change.
- I write because I can put into words the emotions that, perhaps, other people feel in a way that helps them articulate and process those feelings inside of them.
- I write to experiment and play with the English language, with words, with form. I write because I love the taste of words on my tongue.
- I write because I can’t not write. Can you hear the laugh following that statement? I am laughing at myself, because writing is hard, writing is so, so hard, but that laugh is also full of joy. Because how else would I want to spend my life?