Storytelling

As a writer, reader, and as a teacher, I have always known that storytelling is one of the most primal things about our species. It's how we remember, how we try to make sense of our lives and the world. Perhaps we think of our lives as narratives: though so much happens inside the bubble of each moment existence seldom feels like it's following a straightforward arc.

I am always thinking about how to tell stories and create characters and use resonant language.

For me, characters in fiction live just as vividly, or even more so, than people I know in the so-called real world. I credit Kate Bush with bringing me to literature at a young age with her song "Wuthering Heights" which is, of course, the best song ever. Cathy Earnshaw, Jane Eyre, Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and Clarissa Dalloway - to name just a jumbled handful - live in me just as much as they do on the page.

Dying for Beauty: Short Stories

Dying for Beauty my little collection of short stories, is named in honour of Emily Dickinson, one of my favourite poets. Other favourite poets include Christina Rossetti, Lord Tennyson, Keats, Yeats, Sylvia Plath, and Philip Larkin. 

Here is that beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson below.

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.”
And I for truth – the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

Composed around 1862

"Lily: The Very Shape and Image of Love"

Below is an excerpt from the beginning of "Lily: The Very Shape and Image of Love," my debut published short story. I was 23 years old and thought "Damn, this caper is easy!" But it wasn't. It really wasn't. 

Lily: The Very Shape and Image of Love

Lily wanted to be the very shape and image of love. Lily wanted to be beautiful. Lily wanted to make love in slow motion with a knowing man, their silhouettes on the slower screen of night, her neck and shoulders forming the most lovely curve in all the world. Lily was, of course, silly, but Lily was in pain.

Excerpt from Westerly, 33:4 (1988), pp. 45-46. Republished in Dying for Beauty (2001).

Another picture of me at Patterdale on left.