Why I Write

People sometimes ask me why I write stories that include gays and people of color. "You won't sell many," they say. "The market's too small." "Nobody wants to read that." "What's wrong with writing about normal people?"

The joys of genuine human connection are too often derided as sentimental and worthless in light of other, "more important" things, like money. Or power. Or the simple, artificial burst of pride that comes with feeling better than another. These desires consume us, and too many of us end up adrift in a sea of blood and tears, telling ourselves it's enough that we haven't drowned. That we don't need to feel connected. We're afloat, and if Bobby John can't build a boat because we stole his bones to build our raft, well, life's a bitch and then you die. 

I write about love because it's one of the only things that can, if we're lucky, cut through all the bullshit in life and give us, if only for a brief moment, a look into someone's heart and an appreciation for their essential humanity. It's a relatively simple thing, this deepest of human bonds, and yet it can move us to break laws and cross oceans and wear outfits made only of string and chocolate frosting, to hold on to it.

We could do with a few more of those bonds on this earth, I think.

So if I ever get around to finishing any of my projects and you get to read them, I hope you'll smile at the jokes and cry at the funerals and see - really see - another world for a moment. And think of the bones you've stolen and the love you've missed because of it. 

I'm a woman, a psychology graduate student, and a writer living in middle America, and that's about it.