I Want My Stories To

It Must Have Meant Something, Though, That At This Turn Of My Life I Grabbed Up A Book. Because It Was In Books That I Would Find, For The Next Few Years, My Lovers. They Were Men, Not Boys. They Were Self-possessed And Sardonic, With A Ferocious Streak In Them, Reserves Of Gloom.

I Read A Book Called The Art Of Loving. A Lot Of Things Seemed Clear While I Was Reading It But Afterwards I Went Back To Being More Or Less The Same.

I Would ... Go Up To The Mailbox And Sit In The Grass, Waiting. ... Till It Came To Me One Day There Were Women Doing This With Their Lives, All Over. There Were Women Just Waiting And Waiting By Mailboxes For One Letter Or Another. I Imagined Me Making This Journey Day After Day And Year After Year, And My Hair Starting To Go Gray, And I Thought, I Was Never Made To Go On Like That. ... If There Were Woman All Through Life Waiting, And Women Busy And Not Waiting, I Knew Which I Had To Be.

Things Have Changed, Ofcourse. There Are Counsellors At The Ready. Kindness And Understanding. Life Is Harder For Some, We're Told. Not Their Fault, Even If The Blows Are Purely Imgainery. Felt Just As Keenly By The Recipient, Or The Non Recipient, As The Case May Be. But Good Use Can Be Made Of Everything, If You Are Willing.

I Want My Stories To Be Something About Life That Causes People To Say, Not, Oh, Isn't That The Truth, But To Feel Some Kind Of Reward From The Writing, And That Doesn't Mean That It Has To Be A Happy Ending Or Anything, But Just That Everything The Story Tells Moves The Reader In Such A Way That You Feel You Are A Different Person When You Finish.