Restless, Curious, and Nosy
Or...Why I Love Writing Fiction
As a fiction writer I've made it my life's work to imagine I am inside someone else's head listening and recording what they are feeling, thinking, doing, and saying. I dress in their clothes (mostly in my imagination, although I do own a pink silk flapper dress and have invented various characters whose stories make the wearing of this dress necessary). I walk in their shoes, I see the world through their eyes.
One afternoon I am a fifteen year old girl with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other; the next day I am the girl's father, trying to figure out what to do about my wild teenage daughter. This year alone I have been a 15th century Italian monk and Renaissance painter, a beautiful young nun who is in love with the painter, and a fascinating variety of people who are shocked, outraged, jealous, or dismissive of the passion those two share.
In pursuit of tangible details with which to flesh out the lives of such disparate people I have travelled to Italy, to a Polish monastery on a hill overlooking New York City, to many art museums on both sides of the Atlantic, to several county courthouses, various beaches, churches, and a few police stations. I have skulked around a park field house in my hometown of East Meadow, New York, reading the bulletin board, taking notes, and making the employees mighty suspicious. My workday can be mentally grueling but it can also be a walk in the park, quite literally.
Hemingway, whom I admire greatly despite his historic misogyny, said, "the job of the writer is not to judge, but to understand." He also said, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it." Although you might find these two statements to be contradictory I believe both are true, and I aim to employ both when I work. But it's the empathy for others that I enjoy most about writing. It is imagining the daily lives and lifelong yearnings of others that keeps me coming back to my computer, or writing things down on whatever scraps of paper are on hand.
At heart I am a restless, curious, and - I admit it -- nosy person. With every ounce of my being I want to know what it is like to be you, or her, or him, or Barack Obama (ok, everyone wants to know that).
What runs through the mind of a twenty- two year old from Newark who is on trial for possession of an illegal handgun and may be facing jail time? If I were a new mother who'd lost a baby to SIDS, where would that grief drive me, and how would I overcome it? How does a twenty year old nun in 1456 justify a sexual liaison with a monk twice her age?
Other people may have balanced checkbooks or neat closets but I have made my living asking myself questions like those, and then writing down the answers. Every crazy thought I have, every strange thing I overhear while I'm waiting on line at the bank, every odd person I come across in my days, can and often do find their way into my work.
The way I see it, each writer joins in the long conversation that novelists and poets have been having for thousands of years. I am honored and blessed to have my chance to join in that conversation as I imagine the lives of others and share my understanding about what makes people beautiful, tragic, heroic, bitter, resilient, and endlessly fascinating. If it means I have to put on a pink dress, or pretend I am a lascivious monk, or dance as if I am a young man with a whole lot of ill-gotten riches weighing down my pockets, believe me, the pleasure is mine. If one day I am stealing someone's cigarettes or shoplifting at the drugstore, and the next day I am tracking down the thief, at least that keeps life interesting.
With heartfelt thanks, and the support of my publishers and readers, I will continue to live my life playing dress-up, eavesdropping, and being a nosy, curious, story-telling dreamer. I will strive not to judge, but to understand.
